The Scary Parent

Anarchy in the UK

2012-01-20T07:54:00.001-08:00

It's not due out until March, but this morning I received my first copies of the Egmont UK edition of Au Revoir -- pictured above with a well-used London tube map and a brochure from St. Paul's Cathedral, souvenirs from my research trip across the pond in 2010. My family and I spent several days in London, where I got to have lunch on a cold November day with the extremely awesome Ali Dougal, my UK editor, and some of the Egmont publicity staff. England is wonderful, and my wife makes no secret of the fact that we'd move there in a heartbeat...even if we weren't both obsessed with Downton Abbey...

Egmont UK's supercool Electric Monkey imprint did an amazing job with this book. It looks great, they've got a blurb from the LA Times review on the cover and a little teaser on the inside back cover for the sequel, which Egmont is calling Ciao for Now, Crazy European Chick (here in the States, it's Perry's European Playlist).

Anyway, I'm really excited about this -- and I hope UK readers really enjoy it too.

Office 2.0

2012-01-18T08:31:00.001-08:00

I've recently rebuilt my basement office -- or at least rearranged it. What makes it an office? Mainly, the existence of the MacBook, which I spent last year carrying around the house, trying to find a quiet corner to write. Now I've got almost everything I need in one space, excluding my vintage 1979 Kenner Alien figure, which I still keep locked away for fear of its safety. Someday I'll have a place for that too. That, and my even more vintage cymbal-clanging monkey, which is so scary that my kids won't even let me bring it out in daylight.

Scary sucker, isn't he?

Meanwhile, I'm using my new office space to work on a screenplay, and edits for next year's middle-grade book, LENNY CYRUS, SCHOOL VIRUS. I've also got a November publication date for the AU REVOIR sequel, PERRY'S EUROPEAN PLAYLIST, and some possible jacket art that I'm dying to share with you, once we finalize plans for it.

So stay tuned, okay?

News from Everywhere

2011-11-06T03:24:00.000-08:00

AU REVOIR, CRAZY EUROPEAN CHICK has been out for almost two weeks, and people are starting to notice. In fact, it got reviewed in the LA Times this weekend, which is extra cool because my old friend of almost 30 years, Michael Ludy, got the author photo credit. Besides being a great photographer, Mike's an animator who's worked for Disney and The Simpsons, and he snapped this picture of me at his home in Burbank when I was out in LA a couple years ago for the Death Troopers book tour.

Meanwhile I've been busy adapting my horror novel Eat the Dark as a screenplay, which has been challenging and rewarding, usually at the same time. I can't talk much about this project at the moment, but I'm very excited about it. Likewise, the film version of Chasing the Dead is moving forward at its own pace -- I'm not as directly involved in this project, but I have read the screenplay and seen some pages of the comic book adaptation that the producers have developed, and it looks terrific.

What else? Well, I'm very excited to announce that Houghton Mifflin will be publishing my first middle-grade book in spring of 2013, called Lenny Cyrus, School Virus. It's about a very smart, very geeky kid -- a genius, really -- who manages to shrink himself down to travel inside the bloodstream of the girl he's been in love with since third grade, with the goal of changing her mind about him...from the inside. Imagine Diary of a Wimpy Kid set inside the human body, and that's a start. My editor and I are looking at different possible illustrators for this book now, and I'm thrilled to be in the process of undertaking a whole new type of storytelling.

Finally, the sequel to Au Revoir is coming out next fall. And although that seems like a long time from now, the edits of that book are already done -- hard to believe that it's been a year since I was in Europe, researching that book. (I actually wrote some of it at a cafe in Venice, trying to protect my laptop from some extremely aggressive Italian pigeons.) We've got a title for the book (we think) and some possible cover art...and I'll be sharing all of that with you here as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, I hope you're all doing well out there. Stay happy, healthy, useful, and we'll talk again soon.

Halloween Freeze

2011-10-30T03:59:00.000-07:00

This is what it looked like in my part of the world yesterday. Not that I'm complaining -- how could I? It's my kind of weather.

Meanwhile, I spent the day sledding with my kids and working on my screenplay. More on that later --

Hope you're all having a good weekend.

Texas Book Festival Wrap Up

2011-10-23T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'm still in Austin promoting Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, which officially comes out on Tuesday -- but the Texas Book Festival is over. What an amazing experience. I've got some more signings here in town, but meanwhile I had a great time and met some terrific folks here over the weekend -- including Alton Brown, who gave a great talk at the Paramount Theater (and signed a t-shirt for me!).

Lisa Loeb was there as well, to talk about her new children's book.

On Saturday night, I participated in a YA author event in the Texas State Cemetery, where I got to hang out with the incredibly nice Jay "Thirteen Reasons Why" Asher, and then we decamped for after-party at a cool, still-under construction microbrewery.

In the morning there was even time to drop in on Paula Deen for a poorly lit photo op --

After my panel today, I got to hang out with Joe Lansdale, one of my favorite writers in the world -- we got coffee and talked about writing, Texas and anything else that seemed to cross our minds. It was the perfect way to finish off an amazing weekend.

Next stop is Houston, where I'll be signing at Murder By the Book. I'll talk to you then --

2011-10-18T02:21:00.000-07:00

A week from today, Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick hits the shelves. I'm really excited about this book, and I hope you'll take a look at it.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be in Austin this weekend for the Texas Book Festival, which promises to be a blast. If you're going to be in that part of the world, I hope to see you at one of the events and panels on Saturday and Sunday. I also have a couple signings set up in Texas while I'm there. This one, on Monday, October 24th, at Barnes & Noble in Round Rock, TX, and a signing at Murder by the Book in Houston on Tuesday, October 25th.

I've got a couple other new things to tell you as well -- exciting stuff in the wind, which I'll be posting here, there and everywhere, just as soon as I can.

Until then...

Chick in a Box

2011-09-27T04:57:00.000-07:00

This arrived on my doorstep over the weekend. Whoa.

I always get buzzed on the day the book arrives. In this case, I was even more buzzed, since I hadn't had a look at the final jacket design until now. There's some really cool stuff going on under the dust jacket too -- you'll see what I mean soon enough. The book comes out October 25th.

PW goes CRAZY!

2011-08-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

Just found out that AU REVOIR, CRAZY EUROPEAN CHICK got a starred review in Publishers Weekly -- check it out!

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick
Joe Schreiber. Houghton Mifflin, $16.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-547-57738-8
“I’m eighteen years old. In a month I’m going to graduate, I’m waitlisted at Columbia... and this—whatever this is—isn’t part of the plan.” That’s Perry Stormaire as his prom night goes from disaster, when he’s forced to escort dowdy Lithuanian exchange student Gobija Zaksauskas, to something more like Kill Bill after Gobi turns out to be a stunningly effective (and also stunning) assassin. What follows is a whirlwind night of explosions, shootings, stabbings, and car chases as they traverse Manhattan and Brooklyn with Gobi picking off targets over Perry’s protests. As if this situation wasn’t stressful enough, adult author Schreiber opens each chapter of his YA debut with a college admissions essay question (“You’ve just written a 300-page autobiography. Send us page 217”), which should provide a few more palpitations. It’s very well targeted at male teens, with a breakneck pace, quick repartee, hot cars and women, a well-rendered New York City backdrop, abundant action, and some food for thought about what it means to be a man. Plain and simple, it’s a blast. A couple of them, actually. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)

Chasing the Dead - the movie...?

2011-08-08T07:35:00.001-07:00

This isn't exactly new news, but it's exciting nonetheless, thought I'd share it with you --

For immediate release:

Joe Schreiber's horror-thriller novel Chasing The Dead has been optioned by Elizabeth Fowler of Clear Pictures Entertainment and Matt Scott and Tim Westland of Fortune Moon to be developed into a feature film. Schreiber is author of the mega-popular Star Wars: Death Troopers as well as the prequel book, Red Harvest.

Set over the course of a single night, Chasing the Dead is a fast-paced, ferociously tense supernatural thriller. A tableau of shock and horror, death and destruction that pays homage to Stephen King, Chasing The Dead tells the story of a young woman who must travel a twisted route through a freak snow storm, and her own haunted past, in order to save her daughter from a supernatural murderer.

Cool, huh? I'd definitely like to see this one at the drive-in, on a double bill with Eat the Dark...

Deep Blue Joe

2011-08-06T07:04:00.001-07:00

I recently spent some time in California, not the least of which acting like a shark.

Eulogy

2011-07-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

Borders and I go way back.

When I was going to school in Ann Arbor, back in the late-80s and early 90s, they were the place that I hung out on Sunday afternoons to look at cool art prints and big city newspapers.

When I graduated and moved to Boston, I got a job at the Framingham, MA store on Route 9. An old classmate of mine was an assistant manager there, and she hired me on the spot. When my first novel was published in 1994, I did my first book signing there.

When I moved to Los Angeles later that year, that same former classmate was now the general manger for a new Borders opening in West Hollywood, and I ended up helping them launch the La Cienega location. I met some amazing people there.

When I moved up to Portland, Oregon, two years later, I worked in the Beaverton store. One of my old managers from Boston was running it, and he hired me on the spot.

When I moved back east, got married and needed a job in 1999, I went to work at the Chestnut Hill store, in suburban Boston. Yet another one of my old Framingham crew was running that store, and he hired me immediately.

When, in the spring of 2000, I lost my high-paying internet writing gig in New York City after the bubble burst, and had to move down to Philly...when the unemployment checks ran out and my wife and I found ourselves thrust into the position of parenthood, and she got terribly sick and needed full-time medical care, and nobody was hiring anywhere, and we were in need of money and insurance...I got a job in the downtown Philadelphia Borders store.

When we left Philly to central Pennsylvania to start a family, and I went back to school, and need a way to pay the rent while I put in my hours and worked on the novel that would eventually become Chasing the Dead, I got a job at the Borders in Harrisburg.

In a few months, all of these stores will disappear -- those that aren't already gone. There will be endless amounts of ink spilled about mismanagement and poor decision-making, but to me, Borders will always be the place that saved my ass over and over again, a place where I found friendship and camaraderie and support when I needed it the most.

I'll miss it.

A whole new Harvest

2011-07-18T14:11:00.000-07:00

This is the new cover for the mass market edition of Star Wars: Red Harvest. Snow, zombies, lightsabers...what's not to like?

Writerly Ambition, and the Lessons of Bukowski's Tombstone

2011-07-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

I've been maintaining this blog for something like six years now -- and I use the word "maintaining" very loosely. Anybody with eyes can see how infrequently it's been updated. If this blog were a child, social services would have whisked it away from its crack-daddy a long time ago and plunked it into a healthy foster home, and with good reason. Yet here it stays, like that toy in the basement that still gets pulled out and played with by a bored kid on summer vacation.

But enough metaphors. I didn't actually come back here to flog myself with some excoriating mea culpa about web-presence irresponsibility (although that does sound kind of fun). No, I'm here today to talk about something I read on a tombstone -- Charles Bukowski's tombstone, actually.

I haven't read a lot of Bukowski, mainly some poems and his novel PULP, which -- despite being sniffed at as lesser work by Bukowski scholars (and by that I mean Amazon reviewers) -- I really liked. Mainly what I know is that back in the days when I was working in bookstores, Bukowski's goofily formatted Black Sparrow trade paperbacks were consistently the most stolen merchandise in the store. I don't know what being "America's most shoplifted writer" gets you, but I'm willing to bet that Bukowski probably doesn't give much of a shit, being dead and all.

Which brings us back to his tombstone, and its epitaph:

DON'T TRY.

The first time I heard this, I assumed Bukowski was basically taking some final, ultimate piss, flipping off all his sycophants and cult followers with a glib drunk's "why bother" bumper-sticker shout out to bleak existential pointlessness and the fundamental vacancy at the bottom of the universe. And who knows, maybe he was.

But I don't think so.

These days, I think it was simpler and maybe more -- ahem -- zen.

If I've learned anything from the thirty years I've spent staring at the blank page, and then the blank screen, it's that there's no bigger waste of time than the act of consciously trying to write good fiction. Let me say that I again, so there's no misunderstanding: For me, at least, when I sit down and try to "come up with an idea," I might as well stick my hand in a garbage disposal. That way, at least, the painful part is over quickly.

From where I sit, here at my kitchen table on a Friday morning in July with the Hold Steady blasting on the iPod and my dog at my feet, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to write next. This past week, I finished the final edits on the sequel to AU REVOIR, CRAZY EUROPEAN CHICK, and a new screenplay, and sent them both off to their respective destinations. Initial responses to both have been quite positive, so that's good.

So now what?

I have no. Fucking. Idea.

Now, historically, when you find yourself in a situation like this, you have a few options. You can start strap on a headlamp and go spelunking through the inevitable files and salvage yards of unfinished stories, discarded ideas and abandoned novels, hoping for a shimmer of insight into the problem that caused you to jettison those project(s) to begin with, tinker with them long enough and and maybe even get that sumbitch up and running.

I've done that.

Or, you can just pick one of the dozen new ideas currently swimming around in your head and try to kick-start that poor, undeveloped zygote into existence with the sheer force of ambition and literary brio. Done that too.

You can just start writing, picking a character and following him or her along the page like a six-year-old chasing a butterfly across the lawn. Yep, done that as well.

Or, you can update your blog.

Which is to say, hang out with your family. Go to your day job. Catch up on your human interaction. Rent the stupid comedy that you missed when it was in the theaters because you were writing. And when the inevitable itch comes to sit down and try to put words on the page, before they're ready to come to life, do everything in your power to resist it.

No problem, right? Sure. Just like telling a two-pack-a-day smoker that all he has to do is just through away that soft pack of Camels. Easy, right? Just...chuck 'em in the trash. Have a stick of gum instead.

Because here's the news. When you've done it long enough, writing becomes a habit. Not to get too uppity about it, but for those of us indulge in this completely illogical and indefensible creative act, day in and day out, in the face of a thousand glaring arguments to the contrary, it's never exactly been a healthy lifestyle choice. It's a compulsion, frankly, and not a very pretty one, like biting your nails or crunching ice cubes while your spouse is trying to watch America's Got Talent.

There's a reason why, when they show writers in the movies and TV, they're almost never actually in the act of writing. It's not pretty. Yet we pursue it anyway. Why? We're sick. We've got what Michael Chabon calls "the midnight disease," and as hard as it is to keep going, it's even harder to quit.

So we sit down at the keyboard and we try. And invariably -- mistaking ambition and good intention for real narrative intuition -- we screw it up. Because intuition doesn't respond too well to being pushed around. You can't tell your instinct that it's time to get to work. It's the other way around, and thank God...because if my conscious mind were responsible for a tenth of the shit I've put on the page, I think I'd be mentally exhausted all the time.

Truth: The real work comes from deep down, when you don't realize it's being done. The upside is, at its best, when that initial burst of the real, true thing arrives, it sometimes feels almost effortless, like a package arriving on your doorstep.

The bad news is, you can't force it. And, if you're me, anyway, you do anyway. Because at the end of the day, I'm weak. I'm an addict, and even when I know it's not going to lead anywhere, I find myself out there anyway, chasing the dragon.

Which is when I go back and look at Bukowski's tombstone again, the last words he had, not for his fans and sycophants, but for writers, because he was one, he sat there and put in the hours, and he knew how it was.

America's got talent, but when get right down to where the rubber hits the road, talent doesn't do it. Or timing. Or ambition. Or inspiration.

Sometimes you just have to leave it alone, and go back to your life, and when you're ready, then go back to work. When it's time, it's time.

Don't worry.

You'll know.

Au Revoir trailer

2011-07-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

I absolutely love this book trailer that Houghton Mifflin put together for Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick. Enjoy!

Live from New York...

2011-06-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

Last week Houghton Mifflin hosted an awesome book launch party for Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick at Ten Degrees in downtown Manhattan. It was a ton of fun, and it gave me a chance to hang out with all my favorite people, as well as making a bunch of new friends, like Luann Toth from School Library Journal, seen above, with the rather stoned-looking author, and Jack Martin, from the New York Public Library, who emceed the YA buzz panel at BEA.

SLJ did a little write-up of the event, as did Publishers Weekly. I had a blast, and I want to thank everybody who came out and said hello -- and especially to my amazing publicist, Rachel Wasdyke, for setting the whole thing up, bringing the squirt guns and college essay questions, hooking up the open bar, and making everybody feel a little crazy (in a good way) in NYC.

Bye Bye Crazy Chick!

2011-05-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

I love this -- the cover art for the German edition of Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick. I love the art, and the new title. And according to Amazon, at least, it's actually due out before the U.S. version. So if you absolutely can't wait until October, get a German phrasebook and start cramming. Achtung!

Death Troopers title crawl

2011-05-20T18:44:00.000-07:00

I don't know who "Lord Tehranno" is, but this rocks. If you check it out on YouTube, it gives some casting suggestions, all of which I think are brilliant.

Rejection

2011-05-05T08:12:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, I'm supposed to give a talk to the Central Pennsylvania Romance Writers. The topic?

Rejection.

They picked the topic. I told 'em fine. Then I realized I don't have a lot to say about it.

Not because I don't experience it anymore. Quite the opposite, actually. I've published eight novels, two of them have been optioned for movies, two are New York Times bestsellers, and guess what? I still get rejected -- a lot.

Why? It comes with the territory. You don't become a surgeon if you can't stand the sight of blood. You don't become a writer if you can't handle rejection. This isn't supposed to sound tough and insensitive -- it's simply true. Plenty of people quit after they get rejected enough times. The rest of them keep going. We have a word for those folks. We call them writers.

Face it. Rejection sucks. You spend days, weeks, months, pouring your most intense hopes and energies into a project, neglecting family, friends, immediate gratification, all on pure faith. You allow yourself to hope for the best. You dare to dream of success. You wait. You hope. You check your email.

And the universe answers you with a big, cold, abrupt "no."

Imagine showing up for a first date in your best clothes, snappiest haircut, with big plans for the evening and a song in your heart. You knock on the door -- it opens -- and the person in the doorway punches you in the stomach.

Rejection.

It blows.

So what can you do about it? Nothing. It's going to happen. And if it's not happening, maybe that means you're not reaching high enough. Not stretching as far as you could.

Fact: Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick got rejected by eight publishers before it found a home at Houghton Mifflin. An editor there read it, loved it and offered me a two-book deal on the spot. The movie rights were auctioned off a week later. It happens.

Meanwhile, guess what? I keep getting rejected. Why? Because I keep trying different things. TV show ideas. Movie scripts. Crazy young adult ideas that probably shouldn't exist. People say no. They say things like, "I wanted to like it," and "it started out so well," and "it just didn't work for me."

It still hurts. But I keep swinging. Because that's what you do. Because the alternative is sitting around wondering what could have been, if you hadn't quit.

There are some things you can do, to soften the blow. They're pretty simple.

1) Always have something new that you're working on. Let yourself feel good about it. Dedicate yourself to the new project. Not only will it make the waiting period more tolerable, but when "no" comes -- and don't kid yourself, because that's usually the response -- it makes it easier to take. A little.

2) Find yourself some non-writing activities, ideally physical ones. I got a rejection this week. A nice polite no. It put me in a crap mood for the next two hours. I didn't get out of it until I climbed a tree with my two kids. We sat up there and ate apples and talked until I had to go to work. And you know what? It worked. You don't have to climb a tree. Maybe get a pedicure. Go to the gym. Paint the bathroom.

3) Complaining sometimes does help. Get it out of your system and move on. Talk to other writers. We've all been through this, and we're still going through it. I don't care how long you've been writing...when you're this personally invested in an intense act of self-expression and communication, getting a "no" is still going to hurt. It just doesn't hurt for as long as it used to.

4) Take rejection for what it is -- encouragement to improve. These "no"'s are stepping stones, and if you line 'em up, they're going to lead you somewhere better. Seriously. I've been there. I know. Editors everywhere are dying for good writing, good stories, engaging prose. Every single day, they go to the mailbox, electronic or otherwise, dying to blown away by whatever's waiting inside. My best rejections had a single word or two handwritten on the top -- usually something simple like "good" or "try us again" -- and I'm here to tell you, these notes from the trenches were nourishing than a lifetime of well-meaning friends and family members telling me how great it was that I was writing.

We're soldiers, guys. Pain is the game, and we're going to take some losses. But there's a reason why we're doing this -- because we believe in ourselves, and our potential to write stories that people want to read. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but endurance never is.

So ring the doorbell.

Take the gut-punch.

Then go out tomorrow, and try again.

Stuff You Oughtta Know...

2011-04-29T17:53:00.001-07:00

I'm bursting at the seams with news that I can't talk about yet, but until then, here's a couple things that I can discuss.

From June 10-12th I'll be appearing at the Contagion:Outbreak Expo in Omaha. I'm not sure what my schedule's going to be, but it looks like there are a lot of people from The Walking Dead going to be there, so if you're in the area, and you're into reanimated corpses -- and really, who isn't? -- you should totally drop by.

If you look to your right, you'll see a new piece of art has been added to the gallery of book jackets, and that's because Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick seems to have gotten a cover. It's one that I like quite a bit -- there's definitely some cool mystique going on here, and I think it does a great job reflecting the chaos of New York City at night.

Speaking of Au Revoir, and New York, for that matter, I was really happy to find out that it's going to be a selection for the Book Expo America's Buzz Forum in New York next month. My awesome editor, Margaret Raymo, will be there talking about Au Revoir to all kinds of industry professionals, even though I won't be there -- I'll be in New Orleans -- my spectral presence will be overseeing the entire blessed event.

So there.

Old New York

2011-04-22T04:28:00.001-07:00

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick doesn't come out until October, but a friend of mine sent me some pictures of an early road trip we made to NYC -- when I was about the same age as Perry Stormaire, Au Revoir's 18-year-old protagonist.

To the best of my recollection, these shots were taken in the course of one night...back when it wasn't always safe walking through certain parts of the city at night. We took a crazy, two-day road trip and got...let's see...zero sleep at all.

So yeah, I'm about Perry's age here -- although it's hard to imagine how I'd react, going through what happens to Perry in Au Revoir. In fact, when I look back on the kid in these pictures, I almost don't recognize him.

But it's good to see him again, just the same.

Breath Troopers!

2011-04-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

Now this is pretty neat. I just got an email from Lori Carossino, a 7th and 8th grade English teacher in Elma, Washington. This weekend she took her class on a field trip to the Seattle Edible Book Festival, where she and her niece Grace had built a stormtrooper helmet out of -- wait for it -- Tic Tacs.

And of course, they called it Breath Troopers.

Oh, and they weren't just any Tic Tacs, either. Check this out --

That's right. Taun Taun Tacs. For when your mouth truly feels like a hive of scum and villainy.

Thanks for passing this along, Lori. I feel fresher already!

Guest Blogger - Robert Swartwood

2011-04-05T04:16:00.000-07:00

Today's guest post comes from Robert Swartwood. Rob's a good friend, a great editor and a very gifted writer -- and he's got some very interesting things to say about writing. Take it away, Rob...

First novels.

They're a big deal, aren't they? Basically, a first novel oftentimes makes or breaks a writer's career. So much rides on the first novel that if it doesn't meet expectations — hell, if it doesn't exceed expectations — then, ultimately, the first novel is a bust and that writer's career is over, because sales follow you forever and no publisher will take on a second novel if the first one doesn't do well.

Of course, none of that is really true. Sure, first novels are big deals, but they're mostly a big deal to those individual writers who penned them. And first novel isn't quite fair, either, as oftentimes many first novels are really an author's second novel or third novel or, sometimes, even their tenth novel.

But what's the big deal anyway? Publishers invest a lot of time and money in many first novels because they hope those particular writers will be hugely successful. That's why it seems the advance for your first novel is most likely going to be higher than any other advance, unless you end up being very successful somewhere down the line. Sales follow you everywhere, and sales are the first thing a potential publisher looks at before they even think about considering your next novel.

Of course, this isn't really true either. Some publishers do take chances on writers whose previous novels didn't fare too well. They see potential. They see an investment. And, if that publisher is lucky, that investment will bring in some serious cash.

I'll admit that I always romanticized my first novel. Not that it had to be my actual first novel, but my debut novel published by a major publisher. There would be a sizable advance. The marketing department would love it and do everything they could promote it. Publishers Weekly would give it a starred review. There might even be a small tour. Et cetera, et cetera.

Alas, some things are never meant to be. Having gone through two agents, trying to sell a number of novels, I quickly came to the conclusion you can't romanticize anything in publishing. Well, you can, but you're going to be awfully disappointed. Publishing is, after all, a business. They want to sell books. They want to make money. And oftentimes books are rejected for a variety of reasons other than the book itself isn't good. This is the one thing I think many writers don't understand and why they become extremely frustrated. They take that rejection too personally — whether it be from a publisher or an agent — and so when they decide to self-publish their book and sell a handful of copies and get a few nice reviews on Amazon, they feel validated. (Note: some books really aren't that good in the first place.)

Over the past two years I've self-published a handful of e-books, but they were all novellas and short stories, never a novel. Again, that part of me that romanticized debut novels just didn't want to do it. But recently I thought: Why not? I have maybe a half dozen publishable novels just sitting on my hard drive, collecting dust. It was always understood that when I eventually did have a book deal, I could always come back to these novels (at least that's what my agents always said). But now I've decided to start publishing a few of them myself.

This isn't to say I've given up on major publishers (I still send my agent new work). I'm not one of these writers who annoyingly prophesizes the downfall of publishing. Publishing is always going to be around, though it will change. I foresee mass market paperbacks eventually disappearing. E-books are, after all, the new mass market paperback.

But again, I decided to start self-publishing some of my older novels, and when I decided to do that, I figured why not start with my true first novel? A novel I wrote back in college and which I've taken out every once in awhile and touched up here and there. A novel in which I experimented with different things and which has always held a special place in my heart. Why, it made perfect sense to start out with that one, and so that's what I've done.

Joe has been kind enough to let me start my mini blog tour here, which is great, because Joe's first novel, Chasing the Dead, has always been a favorite of mine ... except, as it turnes out, that book isn't Joe's first novel. In 1994, Putnam published Next of Kin by Joseph Schreiber, a novel about a young man who gets kidnapped by a girl claiming to be his sister. The novel has been long out of print, but I actually managed to find a copy and read it and it's a really fun story. I even tried talking Joe into rereleasing it as an e-book, but he said he's not really interested, at least not now as he's working on new projects ... but if a lot of his fans asked nicely, he might reconsider. Just saying.

Anyway, what's interesting to note is that back in 1994, Putnam published Next of Kin as an adult release even though the main character is a fourteen-year-old boy. Nowadays it most certainly would be marketed as YA. The reason I mention this is because the protagonist in my first novel, The Calling, is eighteen years old. Does that automatically make it a YA book by today's industry standards? Well, this is something I'll be talking more about at Tim Lebbon's blog next week.

So first novels — do they make or break an author's career? It's really impossible to say. But the nice thing about self-publishing, at least right now, is that you don't need to worry completely about numbers. If your first novel does poorly, you don't have to shop your next novel around to a hundred publishers hoping someone takes a chance. You can just do it yourself. (Note: I am not advocating every writer self-publishes; sometimes it's not a good idea, and sometimes it makes perfect sense.) In the next few months I plan to release a few more novels: a nontraditional zombie thriller called The Dishonored Dead, and a straight-up thriller called The Serial Killer's Wife. If either of them were picked up and published by a major publisher in the next few months (which is impossible, as the lead time for most books is a year, two years tops), they would be considered my debut novel. But they're not my true first novel. That would be The Calling. And for better or worse, I'm happy to make it available first.

* * *

Robert Swartwood's work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Daily Beast, Postscripts, ChiZine, Space and Time, and PANK. He is the editor of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer. Visit him at www.robertswartwood.com.

The Calling: A Supernatural Thriller is available for an introductory price of 99 cents at the following places:

Kindle (US)

Kindle (UK)

Nook

Smashwords

Robert invites you to follow along with the rest of his tour and to join him on Monday, April 18, at 7 pm EST, where he will be doing a live reading at his website.

FAQ

2011-03-20T13:00:00.001-07:00

I get asked a lot of questions, via email and in person, and it occurred to me that I should probably try to answer the most common ones. Then it occurred to me how boring that would be, so I decided rather than just do a standard question/answer format, I would just give all the answers to the questions that I get asked most frequently, and let you figure out what the question is. It's a little more interactive that way, and if you get really stumped, I'll put a list of possible questions at the end.

So, without further ado, here are some answers. It goes without saying they're in no particular order.

A: It just kind of happened. I had published a couple original novels at Del Rey, who also publish the Star Wars novels, and my editor asked if I'd be interested in writing one. A zombie one, he said. I agreed, and that was pretty much that.

A: I've never met the man personally, although I've heard he's very nice.

A: I have no currently plans for that right now, but if it came up, I'd probably say yes.

A: Since I was twelve. I wrote my first novel when I was sixteen. It was a piece of crap, as was most of what I wrote for the next decade, but I kept at it anyway, mainly because I couldn't leave it alone.

A: I don't have one particular place or schedule. I try to be flexible, because I still have a day job and a family, but most days I get to write for at least three hours at some point.

A: Empire, of course.

A: The first album is still my favorite, but I like Destroyer and Alive quite a bit too.

A: Get an agent. It's still possible, and you won't find an established publisher without one. Write every day, and read everything you can get your hands on, not just the stuff in the genre that you're writing.

A: It's coming out on October 24th of this year. It's about a high school senior who discovers that the foreign exchange student living in his house is actually an international assassin. The film version is in development at Paramount. Josh ("Chuck" "The O.C.") Schwartz is attached to direct. Everything looks good.

A: My 18'' Kenner Alien doll from 1979. I've got most of the original packaging.

A: I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I've had a couple things get lost in the mail so as of right now, I don't have a system. I'm sorry.

A: Making paper mache alien masks with my daughter while we listened to Kings of Leon.

A: They were very easy to work with, and they saved me from embarrassing myself with continuity errors and issues of tone. They pretty much let me do whatever I wanted, without any restrictions along the way.

A: Yes, it's the same virus.

A: I thought it would be funny. It annoyed some people, but I didn't worry too much about it. Most people didn't read the book anyway -- to date, it's my biggest flop, although it remains a personal favorite of mine.

A: None of the artists received any kind of compensation for it. I put the playlist together for my own enjoyment, just as something to listen to, and since then I've continued to do it as a kind of imaginative mirror to what's going on in the book. The playlists just keep getting longer. The novel I just finished -- a sequel to AU REVOIR -- has a 50-song playlist.

A: Not at the moment, no.

A: DC Comics and Titan Books contacted me and asked if I wanted to do a book for them. I said yes. I actually never watched the show before that, so I had to learn about it in about three weeks. I don't know if there are going to be more books at this point, but to my knowledge, everybody who wrote one was contacted by the publisher, rather than the other way around.

A: Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, Jim Harrison, Duane Swierczynski, William Gibson, Chuck Klosterman, Michael Chabon, Richard Russo, Richard Yates, Larry Doyle, Ian Frazier, Michael Northrop and Josh Lieb.

A: The 501st. They're the greatest bunch of guys I could ever hope to hang out with, and their contributions to the signings and events that I've done over the past year and a half -- almost two years now -- can't be overstated.

A: Earlier this afternoon in my kitchen, while reading Bret Easton Ellis' IMPERIAL BEDROOMS, listening to Pearl Jam, eating an atomic fireball and drinking Diet Dr. Pepper.

And now, the questions:

Q: When did you start writing?

Q: What's your favorite Kiss album?

Q: Any more plans for book signings?

Q: I want to be a writer. Any advice?

Q: Anyone special you want to give a shout-out to?

Q: What's the deal with AU REVOIR, CRAZY EUROPEAN CHICK?

Q: When was the last time you experienced a moment of transcendence?

Q: I want to write a Supernatural novel. How should I go about it?

Q: Why do you make playlists for your books? Do you have some deal with the artists on the playlists?

Q: Why did you have a character in NO DOORS, NO WINDOWS reading a copy of DEATH TROOPERS?

Q: Was it hard working with Lucasfilm?

Q: Who are your favorite writers?

Q: Have you ever met George Lucas?

Q: What's your favorite toy?

Q: How can I get you to sign a book?

Q: Are you writing another Star Wars book?

Q: What's your favorite Star Wars movie?

Q: How did you end up writing Death Troopers?

Q: What's the most recent creative endeavor that you've embarked upon?

School books

2011-01-09T04:33:00.000-08:00

Last week I started reading Paul Murray's amazing Skippy Dies, which I recommend to just about anybody who likes, well, just about anything. Putatively the story of an Irish boarding school and its extremely varied group of boys and faculty, Skippy starts off with a bang -- the boy in the title dying in a donut-eating contest with another student -- and then powers backward, upward, sideways and down through life at the school, including but not limited to bullying, Ritalin-snorting, 11th dimension astrophysics and true love. If I had to compare it to anything, I guess I'd pick David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, although Skippy is far more accessible, and definitely funnier.

This weekend, though, I gladly set it aside for a book that I've been waiting even longer for -- also set in a school.

Michael Northrop's new novel Trapped is his second book, after the amazing Gentlemen. Northrop is the real deal -- I can't tell what I like more, his stories, or the narrative voice he uses to tell them, a so-true-you-can-hear-it-whispering-from-the-back-of-the-classroom first-person tour guide to the darkest and sometimes funniest aspects of the American Teenage Nightmare.

In Trapped, Northrop takes us fast and deep into the lives of seven teenagers held captive in a New England high school besieged by a winter blizzard so powerful it sounds like something out of Revelations -- that's on page 2. I knew from the moment I opened the book that I was going to love it. Here's Northrop's narrator in the novel's second paragraph:

"It was the day the blizzard started, and it didn't stop for nearly a week. No one had seen anything like it....It wasn't a storm; it was whatever comes after that."

I love Northrop's books, not just because he's obviously gifted at telling compelling, mega-suspenseful stories with characters that I instantly care about, but because they remind me of how damn excited I was to read YA back when I was a young adult -- that slightly subversive feeling that I got when I realized that I was in the hands of a legitimate, no-brakes storyteller who wasn't going to let me go until he'd finished. Without even breaking a sweat, Trapped harkens back to the days when every good book genuinely seemed to leave me a changed person -- my skull buzzing with voices, stories, ideas and visuals that hadn't ever occupied real estate there before.

As a sidebar, I have to mention that in this day of e-books and Kindles and iPad's, Trapped is just a gorgeously designed book, and deserves to be picked up on that feature alone. Northrop talks here about designer Phil Falco's genius work (he also did the cover for Gentlemen) and the way it grabs you right off the shelf.

Do yourself a favor, remind yourself how it first felt to be gripped by a novel, and pick up a copy ASAP.

Harvest time

2011-01-06T10:59:00.001-08:00

First of all, I want to say thank you to everybody who ventured out and picked up Star Wars: Red Harvest this week. I just found out that it's #22 on the New York Times bestseller list -- so thank you to everybody who ventured out the week between Christmas and New Year's and checked it out. I really appreciate your support -- and I hope you dig the book.

I am going to be doing a book signing this Saturday, for those of you in the central PA area. I'll be signing at Borders in Camp Hill, at 3515 Gettysburg Road, Camp Hill, PA, (717) 975-2132, at 2PM. It should be a lot of fun -- my pals from the 501st will be there dressed as stormtroopers, so bring your cameras and your kids.

In other news, I'm moving forward with 2011's projects, including Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, which Houghton-Mifflin is bringing out in October. I've been looking at some early cover art and jacket copy, and it looks fantastic. I'm also putting the finishing touches on my screenplay adaptation of Ryan Brown's zombie football mashup Play Dead, and it's coming along great as well. I'll try to keep you informed as things move along.

Hope you had a great holiday and January is treating you well.

Toys that owned me, toys I owned

2010-12-20T06:36:00.000-08:00

By now it's no secret to anybody who cares that next week's forthcoming Star Wars: Red Harvest is set in a snow-stricken Sith Academy on a backwater ice planet called Odacer-Faustin. The decision to set the novel in the middle of a planetary blizzard made everything more fun for me -- it ramped up the tension, created an instantly creepy atmosphere, and most importantly, harkened back to when I was twelve years old, playing with Kenner action figures and playsets.

Nothing's more boring than listening to some middle-aged pop culture misfit whining about all the now collectible and much coveted toys that he owned when he was young -- so here goes. I probably had twenty or thirty of the original Kenner figures, some of them from the of original film, but most from the movie I still enjoy the most -- Empire. I had the Hoth versions of all my favorite characters (in fact, I don't think I ever owned an "original" black-vested Han Solo, big or small-headed version). And although I couldn't afford one of the big AT-ATs, I did hit J.C. Penney for one of these babies --

With -- yes! -- the open belly rescue feature! Every kid's introduction into intergalactic splatter.

I spent hours in my room working out every conceivable scenario, fighting and re-fighting the battle of Hoth. And in fact, one of my original, completely gonzo ideas for Death Troopers involved a virtual scenario by Vader to overtake the rebel base that inexplicably comes to life, causing all kinds of mutations inside the ice caves while Imperial forces stages their attack. Although it never would have worked, nobody was as pleased as I was when Leigh Brackett's original screenplay to Empire leaked online earlier this year and I discovered that, at one point, Lucas had actually planned a Thing from Another World-style monster attack in the middle of the battle.

None of which has all that much bearing on Red Harvest...except that it does, sort of, in the sense that I'm incredibly grateful to Lucasbooks for giving me the opportunity to haul out all those toys again, at least in my imagination, and set the monsters loose.

End of the Year Roundup

2010-12-06T16:44:00.000-08:00

I haven't been around for a while, both literally and bloggily, but now I'm back, and for anyone who's interested, this is what's been happening.

I spent half of November in Europe with my family. It started when Egmont Publishing bought the UK rights to Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick back in October, and I was able to have lunch with my new publishers in London before venturing on to Paris, Switzerland, Venice and Rome. The itinerary was also a research trip for the sequel to Au Revoir, which will be set in Europe, but it was also just a great time, and Venice is now my favorite city on earth. Meanwhile, foreign rights to Au Revoir have also been doing well, and as of now the novel has been sold to the UK, Germany, Russia and China.

My current project is the screenplay adaptation of Ryan Brown's novel Play Dead. I've been working hard on this one with some very good producers, and I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. There was a nice blurb in Variety last month about the deal, and they're still hoping to start shooting next year -- although these things are never certain.

Finally, Star Wars: Red Harvest is due out in a couple weeks. I'll probably do a couple book signings for it. Right now the only confirmed event is at Borders in Camp Hill, PA, in early January. I'll post the times and dates once it gets closer.

Hope you're all doing well, and have a great holiday.

Happy Halloweekend

2010-10-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Long before I ever found myself wandering around in the Star Wars universe, I wrote an evil little nugget of real-time horror called Chasing the Dead, that Ballantine/Del Rey published back in 2006. In celebration of Halloween, Del Rey has posted the first 50 pages of Chasing on their Suvudu website. Check it out if you dare...

Scarier in German, isn't it?

2010-10-23T11:24:00.001-07:00

Somehow I think it is.

Bobble Troopers!

2010-10-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

When Mark Van Slyke sent me his copy of Death Troopers to be signed, he sent along this little homemade bit of zombified brilliance. Mark said he made it using the Star Wars monster mashup kit -- and now it sits proudly on my bookcase!

Thanks, Mark! I love stuff like this!

Take a Hint

2010-10-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

A while ago, my friend Rob Swartwood had a great idea -- Rob's had lots of great ideas, actually, but this one just happened to catch on big time. The idea was, is it possible to tell a good story in twenty-five words or fewer?

The result of that idea is Hint Fiction, a nifty new anthology of uber-short stories, edited by Rob and coming out November 1st from Norton. You need this book for a number of reasons -- there's never been anything like it, it's unbelievably addictive reading and includes stories by authors as varied as Peter Straub, James Frey, Joyce Carol Oates and even that guy that wrote Star Wars: Death Troopers.

Some of the stories are scary, some are funny, some are sad, but they're all examples of what can be done with just a few choice words. With the holidays coming, it's the perfect gift, but do yourself a favor and order two, because once you start flipping through it, you're going to want one for yourself. And frankly, you should probably carry around an extra copy the next time some jackass comes up to you and tells you they don't have time to read.

The coolest thing about Hint Fiction is that Rob's created a big bag of literary Doritos -- and I'll bet you that you can't eat just one.

NYCC!

2010-10-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

I'm very psyched to say that I'm going to be appearing at the New York Comic Con this weekend. I'll be doing signings both days, and the good folks at Del Rey are going to be handing out free copies of Star Wars: Death Troopers in paperback, along with some crazy two-sided Red Harvest posters so awesomely new that even I haven't seen them yet. If you put it in front of me, boy, I'll sign it.

Hope to see some of you there.

Seeing Red

2010-09-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

Today Lucasfilm brings you the cover art for Star Wars: Red Harvest.

I like it.

LA Play Date

2010-09-12T20:17:00.001-07:00

I spent last week in Los Angeles meeting with people who had a chance to read Crazy European Chick, and it was great. Extremely busy, though -- I averaged five meetings a day all over town, from downtown to Burbank, driving a rental car back and forth up and down Santa Monica Boulevard, eating a whole lot of excellent sushi and almost never getting lost.

It had been a while since I'd been out on general meetings like this, pitching stories and talking about ideas with executives, producers and development people, and I'd forgotten how much fun it is to sit in a room with people who are genuinely excited about making movies. Many of them had common interests with me, and a lot of them liked the new ideas that I was talking about, both film and book concepts, although only two of them, Roy Lee and Irene Yeung from Vertigo, had the misfortune of having to watch me try to eat noodles with chopsticks while telling them about my great new ideas. Sorry, Roy and Irene. I'll try to practice more at home, I promise.

One of the most exciting pieces of news to come out of all of this is that I'll be doing the big screen adaptation of Ryan Brown's novel Play Dead. For those who haven't heard of it, Play Dead might best be described as a high school football zombie novel, a sort of Friday Night Lights meets Dawn of the Dead. Check it out...

Now I'm in Boston for the weekend, and tomorrow I'll be meeting with my editor at Houghton to talk about the book side of things, which is also moving forward. Recorded Books bought the audio rights to Crazy European Chick last week -- a piece of news that I got on Friday right before sitting down with Josh Schwartz and the creative team in their offices to discuss plans for the movie version. Again, very exciting, but for those with a taste for temporal dislocation, I recommend a meeting on the Warner lot followed by a redeye flight that delivers you the following morning to the East Coast...or perhaps not.

In any case, I'm almost fully recovered now, meaning that all I'll need is black coffee and a shave to get me ready to meet my editor and the publicity people at Houghton tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. LA is a lot of fun...but I do love Boston, especially now that it's September.

Crazy update

2010-08-13T09:31:00.001-07:00

Two weeks ago today, I got the message from my agent that Houghton Mifflin wanted to buy my YA novel, Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, and I was ecstatic. I'd written the book back in February, and it had been turned down a few places, and I was starting to forget that it was out there. Ideally that's what happens when your work is making the rounds -- you're preoccupied with something new, and you don't sit around and stew about it.

Well, there wasn't much sitting around after Houghton Mifflin's offer. I accepted on the spot. A blurb in Publishers Marketplace described the book as "Ferris Bueller meets the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," and the next day I got an email from a producer asking if the film rights were available, and was there someone that she could talk to?

There was. I put her in touch with my film rights agent, Don Laventhall, who -- as it turns out -- had already gotten considerable interest in the book from studios and producers. Keep in mind at this point that the book deal was literally a week old. After months of nothing, things were happening with stomach-knotting speed.

By Monday of this week, my agent had sent the manuscript all over Hollywood, and the first offers were starting to roll in. By Tuesday afternoon, West Coast time, the bidding had gotten down to Paramount and Fox, both of whom wanted it badly enough to knuckle down and get serious when Don made it clear that he was going to close the auction that night.

In the end, the rights went to Paramount, who acquired it for producer Roy Lee, with Josh Schwartz and Wendy Savage's company Fake Empire potentially involved. Josh is the guy who created The O.C., Chuck and Gossip Girl, and in the middle of the bidding, he sent me an email saying, no matter what happened, how much he loved the book. To my mind, at least, his enthusiasm matches the madcap enthusiasm of the book itself. At its heart, Au Revoir is a middle-aged novelist's attempt to recapture what it feels like to be back in high school again, that simultaneous sense of anything-is-possible exhiliration and sheer adrenalized panic.

To say that I was flattered by every producer and studio who expressed interest in the project would be the understatement of the year. While it was happening, the whole thing felt totally unreal. And as the sun set in the west, those personal emails from Josh and Fake Empire, and the fact that Paramount was able to put together the absolute best deal all the way around, made all the difference. It goes without saying that I'm delighted with all of this, even moreso because it was all completely unexpected.

Crazy times, indeed.

Going Crazy

2010-08-02T13:52:00.001-07:00

So I got some good news on Friday. My agent, Phyllis Westberg, emailed and told me that she'd sold my new novel, Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, in a two-book deal to Houghton Mifflin.

This is exciting on a number of levels. First, because Au Revoir is technically a Young Adult novel, a genre that I hadn't really attempted before. In publishing terms, this simply means it's got a teenage protagonist (in Hollywood, they just call this smart marketing) -- although I didn't purposefully write it any differently than any of my other books. My goal was the same as it is every time I sit down to write, which is to amuse myself as I wade ever deeper into the uncharted waters of middle age.

In this case, I started thinking about what might happen if John Hughes had been hired to write La Femme Nikita. Basically, Au Revoir is about a high school kid with a female foreign exchange student living in his house, who turns out to be an international assassin with a one-night multi-kill job in New York City before she gets sent back home. As the night gets progressively wilder, our teenage hero gets roped into driving her around whether he likes it or not. The idea kind of drove me nuts, in a very pleasant way, like a pop song that you can't get out of your head...

...which is another reason this particular project was such a blast. I wrote it back in early February, and I was waiting to get the notes back from Del Rey on the book that would become Star Wars: Red Harvest. My part of the world was getting slammed with a series of snow storms, everything outside was very white, and suddenly I found myself sitting in front of the dining room window with the laptop open, just dying to write this story.

I think the first draft took me all of three weeks. I wrote it without hesitating or second-guessing myself, just having the time of my life on every page, and when I wasn't working on it, I was thinking about it -- what was going to happen next, and when I could jump back into it again. It was the most purely intuitive experience that I'd had since 2003, when I wrote the first draft of Chasing the Dead in radiography school, in my breaks between classes.

When I finished at the end of February, I made a few changes and showed it to two people. One was my wife, who read it and loved it, and the other was my friend Rob Swartwood -- who happens to be a very gifted writer, editor and anthologist, and whose forthcoming Hint Fiction anthology you should order right now. Rob read it, and he and I had lunch, and he told me all the places that needed work -- and he was right about almost all of it.

I did another polish, and my agent took it out...and Au Revoir started getting rejected. I think the rejections started in May or June, and continued into mid-July. I think maybe a half-dozen different houses turned it down, all for different reasons. Either they didn't like the characters, or they had something similiar already in the pipeline, or they just plain didn't dig it. These rejections were a bummer, but at the same time, I couldn't overlook the fact that everybody was passing on it for a different reason, which meant that maybe, somehow, given the right person, it might just hit the sweet spot.

On Thursday of last week, Rob texted me: "Any offers on the YA?" I told him not yet, but that I hadn't given up hope...although secretly, I was beginning to wonder if I'd written a dog -- a fun dog, but a dog nonetheless.

Then the next day, Phyllis emailed and told me about the offer. Houghton-Mifflin loved Au Revoir and not only wanted to publish it...they wanted a sequel too.

I've been through this moment several times now -- that moment when the offer arrives, utterly unexpected, out of nowhere. It gets me every time. I feel like I'm ten years old again, goofy and hopeful and weightless, like I've been drinking Jack and Cokes all morning. With The Unholy Cause and Death Troopers and Red Harvest, the process had been different, the offer extended tentatively at first and then solidified, the contracts signed and delivered long before I sat down to write Page 1. This was different. Compared to those things, this was high-wire work, no guarantees and no safety nets, and it was written for the sheer pleasure of writing it.

On Friday, I took my family out to lunch to celebrate, and I drove to work with the windows down listening to ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky." I was forty years old, and I was about to publish my first Young Adult novel. Maybe I didn't exactly feel young -- but damned if I didn't feel at least a little bit less like an adult.

May we all be so fortunate as we wade ever deeper into the uncharted waters of middle age.

How long should I work on a project before I give up on it?

2010-07-20T17:40:00.000-07:00

Recently I decided that I needed to try harder to finish things. It only took me thirty years to arrive at this decision.

Traditionally, if a writing project wasn't working for me on an intuitive level, I tended to let it go. If I liked it but felt as if it was getting away from me, my instinct was to power through it as quickly as possible--like a bad meal that I suspect might be poisoned -- and live with the consequences. As a result, my career is cluttered with a lot of unpublished (and unpublishable) stuff, material whose potential I either ruined or abandoned by refusing to take my time.

My ongoing project is a novel called Stillwater -- nominally, a thriller about a dysfunctional family on a boat being terrorized by something in a New England lake. I started it back in the summer of 2007, finished the first draft that fall, and sent it to my agent, who made some basic suggestions, then passed it onto my publisher. Meanwhile, Random House published my novel Eat the Dark, and got back to me on the book that would become No Doors, No Windows. The notes on No Doors were extensive, and in the middle of that process, I changed editors, and Stillwater sank to the bottom of someone's desk. In the meantime, Random House accepted No Doors, and more or less right away contracted me to write Death Troopers, with the idea that both books would come out at the same time. Those titles hadn't even pubbed when Random House contracted the Death Troopers sequel...and I got to work on that, followed immediately my Supernatural novel.

Sometime around this time, my new editor, Mark Tavani, finally got back to me with his notes on Stillwater, which were far more encouraging -- and far-reaching -- than I'd expected. Mark saw real potential in Stillwater, and his enthusiasm reminded me of how I'd felt about it, a couple years earlier. I got it out and tinkered with it, ended up taking out the entire second half...and then left it alone to write a young adult novel instead. I'd finished that when the notes for the Death Troopers prequel Red Harvest came in...and they were quite extensive too, so back to the bottom sank Stillwater.

Recently, though, with the delivery of my final Red Harvest draft, I found myself casting about for something new -- and remembered my "something's in the lake" book, still drifting around my hard drive. I got it out and discovered that I had some new ideas after all. I started typing them in...and then flew out to LA to work on a screenplay instead.

One way of looking at this is that I've given up on Stillwater a half-dozen times. But another way is that I've never really given up on it, although I have come close enough times that these days, when I tell my wife that I'm getting out Stillwater again, she just gives me an amused look, like, "Don't forget to wear your helmet if you're planning on smashing your head against your desk for a prolonged period of time, dear."

And in a sense, I suppose I am. I've inserted and deleted enough text from the Stillwater file to make up a much longer book, and I've published three other novels in the meantime, but when I sit down to work on the book, I'm generally still pretty excited about the possibilities. There's real magic in it, and if I can find a way to keep from completely screwing it up, I think it could be terrific.

We'll just have to see.

Letters of Note

2010-06-18T16:55:00.000-07:00

Every so often, I stumble across something truly awesome online.

I'm not talking about distractions, time-wasters, dancing babies, movie trailers, or social networking.

I'm talking about something so incredibly cool that you have no choice but to share it with others.

If you haven't already seen it, I give you Letters of Note.

I love this site. It is what people mean when they use the phrase, "an embarrassment of riches." Here, you'll find previously unpublished correspondance from Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison, E.B. White, Roald Dahl, J.D. Salinger (including a brief, funny review of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which he'd just seen) Philip K. Dick, Walt Disney, Ernest Hemingway, Pete Docter, Kurt Cobain, Hunter S. Thompson, Forrest J. Ackerman, John Candy, Steve Martin, William S. Burroughs, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Conan O'Brien...and the list goes on and on. Some of the lettters are angry, some are hilarious, some are incredibly illuminating, some are astonishingly profane.

All are totally fascinating.

It's updated daily. It reminds me of the fan letter that I wrote to Forrest J. Ackerman myself, when I was twelve or thirteen, and the kind and witty response that I received from him.

It is now officially my favorite site.

Star Wars: Red Harvest - the playlist!

2010-06-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

I got my very last notes for Star Wars: Red Harvest from my editor over the weekend, which means that the final copyedited version of the manuscript will be done this week.

Which means it's time to make public...

The SW:RH playlist

To clarify, this is a completely unofficial, I-don't-make-a-penny-off-it list of songs that I listened to while I was writing and editing and rewriting Red Harvest. It's not endorsed by Lucasfilm, Random House or any of the artists, it exists solely on my iPod (although everything's on iTunes if you want it), and I'm posting it here purely for fun.

Cool?

Then turn those blasters up to eleven and listen to this.

1) "Twentieth Century Fox Fanfare" - Alfred Newman
2) "Live Wire" - Motley Crue
3) "10000 Feet" - Wolfmother
4) "Mind Eraser, No Chaser" - Them Crooked Vultures
5) "Alien - Main Title" - Jerry Goldsmith
6) "The Difference Between Us" - The Dead Weather
7) "Fresh Blood" - The Eels
8) "Panic Switch" - Silversun Pickups
9) "Iron Swan" - The Sword
10) "Black Mud" - The Black Keys
11) "Gimme Shelter (Illuminoids Remix)" - Rolling Stones
12) "Burn" - Nine Inch Nails
13) "Friend of the Night" - Mogwai
14) "If the World (End Titles)" - Guns N' Roses

There it is, folks. Fourteen tracks of whack -- I only wish I could hand out copies of this thing when the book drops in January...

How many times has this happened to you?

2010-06-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

You’re in an amusement park, Disneyworld, say, or Six Flags, with the family, having an excellent time, when suddenly an announcement is made that some sort of parasitic outbreak has infected the park. Due to its spread and intensity, the park goes into quarantine, with no one being allowed in or out. Meanwhile the parasite in question—passed along by the most fleeting of physical contact—is causing those who are infected to attack and destroy whoever is nearby. You and your family must find your way through the park to some area of relative safety to wait out the outbreak, but even then, the people that you think you know, the people you treasure and trust, have already begun to act differently. Nothing is what it seems, and now you’re all along, surrounded by inhuman predators.

Another vacation ruined.

The Shirt Says It All.

2010-06-08T20:36:00.001-07:00

You know you want one.

It's a bust.

2010-06-04T18:45:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by saying that I don't make a dime off of this -- and I can't even afford one myself -- but I do think it's very cool that Gentle Giant is making a Death Troopers mini bust. Apparently they're taking pre-orders for October, when the book comes out in mass market, and in fact, if you buy the thing, they'll throw in a copy of the paperback.

Cooool.

Back from the D

2010-05-31T12:14:00.000-07:00

That's Disneyworld, silly. We went down to Florida last week and spent a big chunk of time hanging out in various theme parks that would probably drive a weaker man mad, but whose magic I metabolized with admirable strength. In the future, though, I wouldn't recommend doing four parks in four days with two kids. We survived through ample repeated doses of Pop Tarts and ice cream shaped like Mickey Mouse's head.

I started the visit by going to see my favorite bar band, The Hold Steady, play a show at the Social in downtown Orlando. It was amazing and the band was incredibly tight, one of the best live performances I've seen...ever. Good thing I was able to capture its full glory with the awesome power of my BlackBerry's camera.

So yeah, we went to Disney. There's a big Star Wars element there, in case you hadn't heard, and I found a great poster of my favorite bounty hunter, Bossk. It just made miss my Kenner action figures all the more.

But I wasn't preoccupied long by melancholy. Not long after, I was placed under arrest to be frozen in carbonite.

Plus, after the Disneyworld Star Tours ride, I found my book on display at the gift shop.

Where is it? Take a closer look, up right next to another slightly less popular character...

Our next stop? Disney's Animal Kingdom. Not only are you allowed to pet the animals, but you can see what Disney feeds them. Seen here: something called a Primate Maintenance Biscuit. Mmm, them's good eating.

But it wasn't all copyrighted characters and monkey chow. On the way north, we stopped by Savannah, Georgia, where I got to visit the childhood home of my favorite Southern gothic writer, Flannery O'Connor. Little known fact: the biggest benefactor of the museum is none other than Jerry Bruckheimer.

Which makes me wonder, how long until we get Michael Bay's version of "A Good Man is Hard to Find"?

The Red and the Black

2010-05-21T06:38:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, it was announced online that my next Star Wars book would be called Star Wars: Black Orchid. This past week I discovered that Amazon is listing my next Star Wars book as Star Wars: Red Harvest.

So what gives?

First of all, let me say that I'm fine with both titles. Black Orchid was the one that my editor came up with, and I thought it was dandy -- it sounded dark and noirish to me, and it didn't really sound your standard Star Wars title. Plus, I'm a big fan of the movie Adaptation. In retrospect, though, it might have been a little too unconventional, because the concern arose that people might think it was a romance novel. What with all the flowers, and everything.

So when Del Rey got back to me and asked for suggestions, I tossed out a whole list of options, including Red Harvest. And that didn't sound noir-y at all.

And plus, nobody's ever used it before, as far as I know.

Uh, yeah. So anyway. I hope you like the new title, but more importantly, I hope you'll like the book. It's coming out early next year.

And it might even still be called Red Harvest.

We'll see.

Tour Dread

2010-05-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

For those with an insatiable appetite for listening to me blather, I give you yesterday's Dread Central interview with me. In this one, I went out of my way to be as brutally honest as possible, as opposed to indulging in the all-too-frequent bouts of self-mythologizing that so often plague my interviews ("And I landed the 747 under the Golden Gate Bridge, bringing all 345 passengers to safety while defusing the bomb with my teeth," that sort of thing). So, if naked candor is your thing, check it out.

Or maybe you're the type that prefer to interrogate me personally, in which case, read on, because the Joe Schreiber Summer 2010 mini-tour is hereby in the house. So far, we have:

Saturday, July 17th
Borders Express
298 Exton Square Mall
Exton, PA 19341
(610) 363-5036
1-3 PM

Saturday, July 24th
Borders - Camp Hill
3515 Gettysburg RD
Camp Hill, PA 17011
(717) 975-2132
1-3 PM

Saturday August 14
Waldenbooks - Lebanon Valley Mall
2264 Lebanon Valley Mall
Lebanon, PA 17042
717 274-2731
10-2 PM

I have no idea if there will be anymore dates coming, but if there are, I'll be sure to post them here as soon as I know.

Darth by Darthwest

2010-05-10T16:51:00.000-07:00

Revealed at last -- the cover art to my next Star Wars novel! (Thanks to Martin Sweeney)

It Talks!

2010-05-09T18:28:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's me on the cover of the current issue of Supernatural Magazine. Or at least there's an interview with me inside, wherein I babble rather randomly about how Supernatural fits in well with classic American storytelling, from Huck Finn to On the Road. And if that's not enough, there's also several pictures of me staggering half-naked around the TV's production offices with a Civil War musket and bottle of Jim Beam in my hand.

Okay, that last bit is an exaggeration. But you should still grab the mag if you get the chance.

Meanwhile, Jens over at Unreality SF has just posted a brand new interview with me here, so make sure you check that out as well!

Supernatural Tuesday

2010-05-03T17:24:00.000-07:00

If you're interested, my novel Supernatural: The Unholy Cause comes out tomorrow. If you're on the fence, check out Liana Bekakos' review here at Eclipse Magazine -- she seemed to dig it...at least enough that she interviewed me at TV.com about all my deep dark secrets.

And if you still don't know if you wanna take the plunge, Fearnet's got a chapter excerpt for you to read. Don't say you weren't warned.

Put Down that Weapon...

2010-04-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

I've recently taken up target shooting with my personal favorite weapon, the E-11 blaster rifle. What's with all the spare time? Well, for one thing, I've finally turned in my rewrite on the next Star Wars novel...so why not celebrate with a little mall hunt?

In other news, Korpil.net has a new interview with me up here, in Spanish. Here's the English version. There's probably going to be more interviews coming in the next few weeks, with Supernatural: The Unholy Cause coming out next Tuesday. I'll let you know when I find out more.

Also, I hope to be posting the playlist to the new SW book soon. As readers of this blog know, I usually put together a highly unofficial soundtrack to go along with the story, and I'm about half done with that. So, you know...check back.

How did you end up writing a Supernatural novel?

2010-04-08T18:41:00.001-07:00

Since I've been asked this question more than once lately, I thought I'd take a moment to explain how this happened.

It was never my intention to write a Star Wars novel or a Supernatural novel. I enjoy both Star Wars and Supernatural, but until recently I was quite content to maintain my spectator status. In fact, with the exception of some internet parodies about ten years ago, I've never written anything using existing characters. Just not my thing. Until...

Last summer I was chatting with Chris Cerasi, who's in charge of licensing at DC Comics, about possibly doing a Batman novel. I wanted to write a sort of cold-case Silence of the Lambs type thriller with Bruce Wayne venturing out in the country to investigate a missing persons case. We kicked it around for a week or so, and then Chris asked me if I could write a Supernatural novel instead.

"What kind of supernatural novel?" I asked.

"No," he said patiently, "a Supernatural novel. You know, like the show. We're doing them with Titan Books. Are you interested?"

Ah, I said. All right, then.

What followed was a pretty intense crash course in the show's mythology, complete with all the magazines, season guides, reference books and action figures that I could handle. FedEx began arriving at my doorstep with packages of screeners and scripts. In a way it was similar to the research I'd done for Death Troopers, except on speed -- this was late August, the manuscript was due October 15th, and I still needed an idea.

I came up with several different takes and sent them to Chris, along with Cath Trechman at Titan in London, who would actually be publishing the book, and Eric Kripke and the show's creative team at Warner Brothers. The list of possibilities went something like this:

1) BARCODE BABIES - Sam and Dean encounter the children of former cult members, all tattooed with ritualistic bar-codes that have supernatural powers over machinery and human beings.

2) GHOST MULES - The boys discover a Midwestern airport that serves as waystation for the souls of the dead...and a smuggling ring that helps people take worldly possessions to the other side.

3) I DON'T NEED YOUR CIVIL WAR - In the middle of a Civil War reenactment, an ancient occult relic turns up -- a knotted piece of the actual rope that Judas used to hang himself -- that infests both sides with betayal, trapping our guys in the middle of a demon possessed Antietam.

4) DRAWKCAB - In his continuing search for God, Castiel and the guys manage to provoke an angel (or demon) whose M.O. is temporal dislocation, reversing the flow of time itself. Told backward, MEMENTO-style, this would unfold at a blinding, figure-it-out-on-the-fly speed, with every revelation and reversal changing the way the reader looked at the story's secrets.

5) BLOODRUNNERS - "Wages of Fear" meets "Salem's Lot" - In an effort to ward off the apocalypse, the Winchesters get roped into helping deliver a truck full of blood and dynamite to a mountaintop vampire nest in the middle of a raging blizzard.

I don't remember which one of these I liked the most -- it might have been the backwards one, because I thought it would make a fun episode -- but I distinctly recall thinking I'd be fine, just as long as Cath, Chris and Eric didn't like the Civil War one. Basically I'd only thrown it in there to pad the list out, and I didn't want to do the research.

Of course, that was the one everybody really liked.

Thus began my second round of authorial legwork. In extremely short order, I started reading everything I could get my hands on about Civil War re-enactment, including Tony Horwitz's excellent Confederates in the Attic. I walked the battlefields of Gettysburg and hung out with some re-enactors. And, with one eye on the deadline, I started writing.

(Keep in mind that right around this time, I was finishing up my first draft of my second Star Wars novel, which also had an October 15th deadline, and preparing to go on a two-week nationwide book tour to promote Death Troopers and No Doors, No Windows, as well as working a full-time job. I'd never been through anything like it in my life. Chaos was an understatement. My children didn't recognize me. My wife occasionally spotted me wandering through the house and called 911, thinking I was an intruder.)

I finished my first draft at on Monday morning, October 14th, in Los Angeles, on the first day of my book tour, and sent it to New York and London. Three weeks later the notes arrived, and I went back and started revising -- plot, character, dialogue, tone, all aspects of making it the best and most satisfying possible addition to the Supernatural universe. I worked on it between signings and readings and in-store appearances, in an airport in Detroit and a hotel in Tulsa and my mom's house in Michigan.

And by Thanksgiving it was finished.

Is it any good?

I think so. I know I had an absolute blast working on it, and my editors were pleased. As a writer, I try to say "yes" to things that I haven't tried before, and this project certainly qualified. I enjoyed my time hanging out with the Winchesters down south, and all I can hope is that you will too.

My pals Sam and Dean (and Hank)

2010-04-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

The Winchester brothers showed up last night in an airmail envelope from Titan Books in London. I was happy to see 'em. So was my dog Hank.

Fun fact: Supernatural: The Unholy Cause was not the original title of the book. I wanted to call it I Don't Need Your Civil War, partly because I'm a G'n'R Fan, and partly because it sounded more like the title of an actual Supernatural episode.

It's not a novelization of an episode -- it's an all new, original story featuring the boys and a Civil War re-enactment that literally goes to Hell. Among other things, it's got runaway trains, Clint Eastwood references and smoking hot southern sheriff named Jackie Daniels. I had a great time writing it. It's due out later this month.

Hey, Hank...check it out. Closer...

Closer...

Good boy.

Advice for Writers

2010-03-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

This week's wisdom comes courtesy of two rather different sources. The first is recently unearthed memo to the writers of the TV show The Unit, from its creator and executive producer, David Mamet. There's a ton of practical wisdom here, and you should definitely check it out yourself, but here are some highlights:

QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE GOAL.

SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS.

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT?
3) WHY NOW?

And, similarly:

THE JOB OF THE DRAMATIST IS TO MAKE THE AUDIENCE WONDER WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. NOT TO EXPLAIN TO THEM WHAT JUST HAPPENED, OR TO*SUGGEST* TO THEM WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

ANY DICKHEAD, AS ABOVE, CAN WRITE, “BUT, JIM, IF WE DON’T ASSASSINATE THE PRIME MINISTER IN THE NEXT SCENE, ALL EUROPE WILL BE ENGULFED IN FLAME”

Obviously this is aimed at TV writers, but the lesson in dramatic writing and scene construction can be cross-applied to those writing novels and short stories as well. And so we thank you, David Mamet, for writing in ALL CAPITALS about these lessons that we definitely need to learn.

Our second piece of advice comes from Carson at Script Shadow, another one of my favorite sites. This week was "alternate draft week" over there, where Carson compares and contrasts (and whenever possible, posts links to) alternate drafts of well-known screenplays. Yesterday he posted a review of an early, alternate version of The Empire Strikes Back by Leigh Brackett.

Brackett is a Hollywood legend, having written The Big Sleep with William Faulkner and Rio Bravo for Howard Hawks, among many others, and she was working on Empire for George Lucas when she died. I haven't had a chance to read Brackett's draft yet, but Carson gives us a pretty good synopsis of how it differs from Lawrence Kasdan's finished and produced revision, and along the way he has some pretty insightful things to say about how the final version works better.

Carson?

"Comparing these two drafts, in the Brackett Draft, we meet Vader hanging out on his throne, waiting for information. Compare that to the film, where he’s in his Star Destroyer, gung-ho searching the galaxy to find Luke. Which is more interesting? Or let’s look at the rule on a much smaller scale. In Brackett’s draft, when we meet Han, he’s sort of rummaging around the base, running into people and occasionally talking to them. Compare that to the film, where he’s desperately trying to get his ship fixed so he can get the hell out of here! Which one is more interesting? At the beginning of every scene, take every character and ask yourself, “What are they doing right now? What is their goal in this scene?” You do that and you’ll have a bunch of interesting characters engaging in an interesting scene. You don’t, and you’ll have a bunch of characters standing around doing nothing, waiting for their turn to talk. Which one is more interesting?"

Now, just as a hypothetical, say you happen to be in the middle of rewriting a Star Wars novel with a compelling antagonist...could you ask for a more penetrating diagnosis of how to go about the job?

Why I don't write a lot of short stories

2010-03-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

Last week I finally had a chance to watch Dreams with Sharp Teeth, Erik Nelson's excellent documentary about Harlan Ellison. I've never met Ellison personally, although I've been reading his stuff for almost thirty years -- I think my first exposure to his work was in fifth or sixth grade, when I found an illustrated version of Ellison's famous short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" stashed in the corner of the school library. To say that the darkness of that story stained my sensibilities permanently is to badly understate the case -- I remember feeling excited and terrified by the narrative voice, and the sense that it was going too far, and I didn't just like it...it resonated with me. I wanted to write that kind of stuff...urgent, vivid and extremely dark.

Ellison's work continues to be profoundly inspiring to me. His stories and essays are remarkable models of imagination and raw nerve. Not surprisingly, when I was starting out, most of my own short stories sounded just like his stuff. Like Stephen King and Peter Straub, and later Jim Harrison and Elmore Leonard, Ellison was one of those writers that I actually spent more time learning how not to write like...if that makes any sense at all.

And then I stopped writing short stories completely.

It wasn't a conscious decision, as far as I can tell. I just started writing novels, and stuck with that. Ellison, of course, is famous for his short stories. He has written novels, including one of the truly great rock 'n' roll novels of all time, Spider Kiss, but he's gonna be remembered for the short stories. Nelson's documentary touches on this briefly, the notion that his career would have been different if he'd written more novels...but that wasn't what Ellison was about. He seems to thrive in the short form -- heightened bursts of high-intensity prose, three or four or five thousand words.

I can't do that to save my life.

Fun Fact: I was recently invited to contribute short stories to two very different genre anthologies -- one, a "romantic thriller" story, and the other, an anthology of speculative fiction. I said yes to both offers, because I'd never done anything like that before and I'm in the habit of saying okay to new experiences, just to say I tried it.

Fun Fact #2: I've probably only written three decent short stories in my life.

Not that I haven't tried. Heavens knows I have. Every so often I get an idea that I think would make a good short story, and sometimes I even try. But usually the results are so utterly unsatisfying -- either too much or too little -- that I end up stashing it in the hard-drive file labeled "Cripples and Orphans." This little folder is just as bleak and depressing as it sounds...it's full of unfinished short stories and ones that I did finish, but they suck anyway.

Fun Fact #3: Sometime in the next few months, I better learn how to write short stories.

Good thing I don't have anything else going on.

Let's Split

2010-03-12T03:13:00.000-08:00

Ever since I watched the red band trailer for "Kick-Ass," I can't get this song out of my head. Their cover of "Nights in White Satin" is pretty rockin' too.

I...am...Bearsharktopus!

2010-03-08T14:36:00.000-08:00

What does that mean? Well, I'm a terrifying creature of many parts. And what exactly does that mean?

At the moment I'm working on -- or awaiting notes on --

A) Star Wars: Black Orchid

B) My ultraviolent John Hughes/Luc Besson YA mashup Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick

C) My television pilot script Black Rocket

D) My something's-in-the-water family horror novel Stillwater

E) A top secret project that's actually paying me to pretend like a corner of my world right here in Pennsylvania is being overtaken by a plague so horrible that I can't go into anymore details at the moment.

All this, plus the Bearsharktopus costume that I have to get ready for Halloween this fall. First, you start with chicken wire...

Oh yeah, and speaking of having many parts, do yourself a big favor and check out Norman Partridge's awesome new blog American Frankenstein. Besides being an all-around great guy and new father, Norm's one of the most captivating, compelling and outright damn entertaining writers out there today. His novel Dark Harvest is a classic Halloween novel, and he's got a new kick-ass, take-no-prisoners collection coming out next month, Lesser Demons.

This ain't just the whiskey talking, either -- Norm's the real deal. I've read this collection cover to cover and got right back in line to ride it again. Do yourself a favor and check him out.

Announcing the 2012 World's End Writers' Retreat

2010-02-24T17:17:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you struggle to find time to write. With all the distractions of modern life -- traffic, dirty dishes, bourbon, the constant threat of lawsuits -- it's difficult to find time to focus on your work in progress. Some days you're lucky if you get a chance to sit down at the word processor at all.

Today I present the solution -- the first annual World's End Writers' Workshop and Retreat. Tentatively scheduled for June 7-15, 2012, at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, this retreat offers all the benefits of a secluded work environment, including, but not limited to:

-Absolute silence
-Twenty-four hours of daylight every day
-Scenic vistas in which to ponder the existential despair unique to the human experience
-Possible attack by shape-shifting alien

Not to mention, you'll be able to benefit from the wisdom and experience of our guest authors, celebrities and bestselling writers all (names to come).

So don't let this opportunity pass you by. Stay tuned here for details as they emerge. Exciting!

Blue Pencil Days

2010-02-22T13:42:00.000-08:00

You know what's actually getting more fun?

Editing.

I used to hate it. Getting a manuscript back with notes -- especially the big structural and conceptual suggestions and recommendations -- always had a huge gut-punch factor for me. Let's be honest, every writer starts out wanting to send in something perfect and pristine the first time around, to get it back with nothing but a big red lollipop taped the front and a note: BRILLIANT, YOU GENIUS -- DON'T YOU DARE CHANGE A WORD!

Of course this almost never happens. I mean, ideally you don't turn in some crippled, whimpering thing that requires what Hollywood calls a page-one rewrite (I've almost done that on occasion, most recently with No Doors, No Windows, and it can be taxing) but at the same time, you have to anticipate that wiser and more objective eyes than yours are going to find opportunities to improve your work.

A huge part of this has to do with how good your editors are. Right now I'm fortunate enough to be working with one of the best in the business, Shelly Shapiro, editor at large for Del Rey Books. Not only does Shelly have an amazing eye for story and character, but she's an expert in the Star Wars universe. As a writer, I feel for her the same sort of reverence and affection that a SWAT team member feels for his or her Kevlar vest. She's the bulletproof shield that protects me from my own ignorance, and on more than one occasion, she's saved my creative life.

Hyperbole, you scoff. How can anyone save anyone's creative life?

Well, I will tell you. Obviously a lot of it has to do with making the book the best it can be -- but I think the other aspect of the process is helping me remember what got me excited about the project in the first place. By asking the right questions about the choices that I've made throughout the first draft, an editor can re-ignite that essential spark that makes the difference between a dynamic, engaging story, and a mere string of words along the page.

And that's why editors rock.

Star Wars: Black Orchid

2010-02-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

So if you look on Wookieepedia, you'll see that the title of my forthcoming Star Wars book has been revealed as Star Wars: Black Orchid. It should probably be noted that the image above, while amusing, is not particularly revealing when it comes to what the book is actually about. In fact, it's pretty much useless in that regard.

But it is kind of funny.

Meanwhile, it should also be noted that the author of Star Wars: Black Orchid , in addition to having a Supernatural novel coming out in a couple months, has also just finished another novel in the meantime, tentatively titled Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick.

No artwork is currently available.

Advice for Writers (Part 1)

2010-02-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

"It was about 6 years ago and I had just quit a twelve year job as a postal clerk and was trying to be a writer. I was terrified and drank more than ever. I was attempting my first novel. I drank a pint of whiskey and two six packs of beer each night while writing. I smoked cheap cigars and typed and drank and listened to classical music on the radio until dawn. I set a goal of ten pages a night but I never knew until the next day how many pages I had written. I’d get up in the morning, vomit, then walk to the front room and look on the couch to see how many pages were there. I always exceeded my ten. Sometimes there were 17, 18, 23, 25 pages. Of course, the work of each night had to be cleaned up or thrown away. It took me twenty-one nights to write my first novel."

--Charles Bukowski, Women

Jack Frost

2010-02-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, my part of the world got slammed with a truly ridiculous amount of white powder...no, Scarface, the other white powder. It all happened over the course of about twelve hours on Friday night and Saturday morning, and by midday Saturday we were wading around through a foot and a half of snow.

Fortunately for me, there was some blended Canadian whiskey in the house, and plenty of writing to be done. As the photo above shows, the combination of liquor and prose was highly successful, and the prospect of more snow in the next two days guarantees more work and less play.

Redrum...

Blast(er) from the Past

2010-01-29T12:52:00.000-08:00

Can't believe I never shared this with you before, but this is the first part of a reading/talk I did on a Death Troopers tour stop at B&N in Indianapolis. There's more out there on YouTube, but this is the first part. Have a few drinks and it starts to make a lot more sense.

Scary houses need love too!

2010-01-28T15:32:00.001-08:00

And it's been a lovely week for No Doors, No Windows. First we had Michael Northrop's captivating dramatic interpretation, and now Jake Chism has posted a lovely review of the book at Fiction Addict.

Thanks, guys!

If you haven't checked out the book yet, I invite you to order it, pick it up or check your local library. You can read it during the summer time, but my feeling is that it's a whole lot more effective with a chill in the air.

Lost Ladies of Noir - Linda Darnell

2010-01-26T14:57:00.000-08:00

I was going through Eddie Muller's indispensible Dark City last night, looking for ideas for a title, when I came across a picture of Linda Darnell, an actress who, in my benighted ignorance, I'd never heard of before. The still was from Otto Preminger's 1945 noir classic Fallen Angel, which in my ignorance, I've never seen. Are you noticing a pattern here?

Linda Darnell also did No Way Out in 1950. Did I see that? Nope. Looks like I've got some renting to do.

I love noir, and I love noir actresses, and I really love discovering new actresses and movies that I haven't seen before. If I build a panic room in the basement with a DVD player and flat-screen and "accidentally" lock myself inside for a few days, that ought to do it...

I'm a Pepper...

2010-01-25T15:54:00.000-08:00

Because I just bought a case of Dr. Pepper Heritage, the newest addition to the "throwback" phenomena of soda being manufactured "with real sugar" instead of corn syrup or what have you. I opened one last night and I have to say, I'm not completely bowled over by the difference between that and corn syrup, so I decided to see what would happen after I added some of this.

And by golly, they're right, you really can taste the difference! In conclusion, it's exciting, this whole heritage business, and I endorse it whole-heartedly.

Book Theater is Go!

2010-01-23T15:46:00.000-08:00

So I was checking my Facebook page tonight -- because it is the only method I seem to be able to communicate with the outside world -- when I became aware that award-winning YA author Michael Northrop has elected to spend valuable writing time doing an online reading from No Doors, No Windows.

Thank you, Michael. And while I don't dare attempt to reciprocate with a reading from your brilliant Gentlemen , which everyone should order right now, I might be tempted when I'm finally allowed a peek at your forthcoming novel Trapped, whose description is so enticing it staggers the imagination.

"So, is your blog completely dead now?"

2010-01-20T15:35:00.001-08:00

This was the question that turned up on my Facebook page tonight.

And the answer is...

No!

It was just sleeping.

It turns out that the sound of fiction being written lulls the blog right to sleep. You write twenty, thirty thousand words of new prose, and the blog just nods off. Goes into hibernation. And then you have to go and wake it back up. Feed it some coffee. Dunk its head in icewater till it sits up and blinks its bleary red eyes at the world.

Which is a fancy way of saying that I've been writing the stuff that I've always been writing -- made-up stories. A new novel. Some screenwriting stuff. You know the drill.

Meanwhile, did everybody have a good 2009? Pretty much glad to put it behind you and get on with new business? Me too. So here's what it is.

I'm in New York City tomorrow, specifically in Brooklyn, at GELF Magazine's "Geeking Out" event at the JLA Studios Art Gallery, in the DUMBO neighborhood. The event is at 7:30 and there are drinks. What will I talk about? Prepare to be dumbfounded and amazed.

In other news, the second Star Wars horror novel has a new publication date, in February of 2011. Which is probably a good thing, since we still don't have a title for it, though there are some pretty good suggestions out there. I'll keep you posted.

For those of you craving a more immediate fix, my Supernatural novel, Unholy Cause, is due out in just a couple short months. The folks at DC/Titan books are really happy with the way that it came out, and so am I. So check it out if you dare.

I've been reading forthcoming stuff by Norman Partridge and Peter Straub, and the new collection of stories by Robert Stone. The best movies I've seen lately are The Hurt Locker and Anvil: The Story of Anvil. I recommend both without reservation.

And to anyone who might still be out there, I hope things are going well with you.

I'm Santa. Who the hell are you?

2009-12-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

I don't know what's wrong with me, I really don't. Honestly, one post in December? That's supposed to be a blog?

I could give you excuses -- doing a final polish on Supernatural: The Unholy Cause, going into heavy revision mode with Stillwater, awaiting editorial notes on my new Star Wars novel, helping out my friend with his screenplay...but really, is this the season for lame excuses?

No. It's the season to hang out with family, watch Bad Santa and Shane Black action movies and get messed up on spiced rum and bourbon. It's the time of year to make lists (best songs, best books, best movies) and wander down Ninth Avenue with your hands in your pockets and feel grateful for all the good things that have come our way.

Of course we always need to keep working. Keep writing. Keep useful.

So tell you what. Go download some great free Christmas mashups and write a few thousand word on your work in progress. Then have a party. Invite everybody. Get kissed. Take pictures.

What's the best thing that happened to you this year?

My Supernatural Playlist

2009-12-04T17:03:00.001-08:00

I did it for Death Troopers. I did it for No Doors, No Windows. And now, here it is for my forthcoming Supernatural novel, The Unholy Cause -- the playlist I created while writing and editing the manuscript, due out in April.

To clarify: I'm posting this list simply as a curiosity, because it was something fun that I did while working on the book. That's it. I don't have any sort of arrangement with the artists or songwriters, and none of it has been endorsed by DC Comics, Titan Books, the CW, Warner Brothers, or anybody else. Cool?

1) "Civil War" - Guns N' Roses
2) "Flirtin' with Disaster" - Molly Hatchet
3) "Sweet Home Alabama" - Lynyrd Skynyrd
4) "Bad Company" - Bad Company
5) "Black Betty" - Spiderbait
6) "Me and the Devil Blues" - Robert Johnson
7) "Stack Shot Billy" - The Black Keys
8) "Don't Go into that Barn"- Tom Waits
9) "Can't You See" - Marshall Tucker Band
10) "Midnight Rider" - The Allman Brothers
11) "Wild Eyed Southern Boys" - .38 Special
12) "Swamp Witch" - Jim Stafford
13) "I Put a Spell on You" - Marilyn Manson
14) "No Expectations" - Soulsavers

In a perfect world, the book would come with a CD, or at least a little flash drive you could drop in your laptop and listen to these tunes while you read the book. As it is, you'll have to do a little snooping for yourself.

Sam and Dean would probably approve.

If you really loved me...

2009-11-30T17:11:00.000-08:00

...you'd buy me Cormac McCarthy's typewriter.

It's up for auction at Christie's, estimated to go for $15,000-$20,000. And although on first glance this might seem like more than you're comfortable spending on me for Christmas, consider that, in accompanying letter of authentication, McCarthy states that he: "typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not yet published. Including all drafts and correspondence I would put this at about five million words over a period of fifty years..."

So, that's pretty good. If you pull the ribbon out you could probably get a look at some of that unpublished stuff, and that would be pretty cool. Not to mention that, as one of our finest living writers, McCarthy is probably a decent investment. Say you need a half-million for retirement or some quick cash to escape to a non-extradition country in a hurry, no questions asked. There's got to be a library or university somewhere that would be happy to take it off your hands.

Meanwhile, I wouldn't mind sitting down in front of it, rolling in a fresh sheet of paper and seeing what came out. After all, any typewriter that generated Blood Meridian has to have some serious freakin' mojo going on.

When the Going Gets Weird...

2009-11-26T20:15:00.000-08:00

Simon Thalmann's interview with me in the Kalamazoo Gazette runs in its extended form in the current issue of Weird Tales. I haven't actually seen a copy of the magazine yet, but I'm very excited to check it out.

Meanwhile, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

New Podcast Up!

2009-11-20T21:36:00.000-08:00

Over at Ideology of Madness, I've got a cool podcast available for your listening pleasure. Aron and Paulie did a great job getting the sick inside info out of me on a whole bunch of stuff, and I can't completely blame the Knob Creek and road exhaustion from the Michigan trip that I'd just returned from. They're just that good at it, friends.

Thanks, Aron and Paulie, for the great questions!

My Supernatural Book

2009-11-19T22:40:00.000-08:00

Now has a synopsis online at Amazon.

A Supernatural novel that reveals a previously unseen adventure for the Winchester brothers, from the hit CW series!

Way back in April 1862, Confederate Captain Jubal Beauchamp leads a charge across a Georgia battleground… Fast forward to 2009 and a Civil War re-enactment becomes all too real. When Sam and Dean head down south to investigate they find that history has got somewhat out of hand…

So now you know. My working title for the book was I Don't Need Your Civil War. I got to go to Gettysburg to research this. Stay tuned for pictures...

Twenty-Eight Days Vader...

2009-11-19T00:02:00.001-08:00

Princess of Tulsa (and others)

2009-11-18T09:49:00.001-08:00

Had a great time in Tulsa over the weekend. I know, it's Wednesday, but I'm just now getting a chance to catch up. Monday was my daughter's birthday, and yesterday we had painters and cable/TV/internet install people in the house all day long. Not to mention that I finally got my revisions done on Supernatural: The Unholy Cause, due out in a scant five months.

Anyway, back to Oklahoma -- major thanks to the Travis and the rest of the Tulsa Ink Slingers for bringing me out, putting me up, taking me out for Mexican and giving me a chance to talk about writing, Star Wars and whatever else came tumbling out of my tequila-soaked consciousness. Also big kudos to the Rebel Alliance of Tulsa, and Joan at Barnes & Noble for putting together a great event.

Tulsa was almost -- but not quite -- the last signing I've got planned for now. I'll be doing one more just before Christmas around town. Meanwhile I've got more Star Wars editing to do, and work on an original novel that I can't wait to get back to.

More later...

Camp Hill book signing

2009-11-08T16:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's book signing at Borders Express at the Capital City Mall in Camp Hill was a special one for a number of reasons. Partly because it's my first "hometown" signing -- I've been all over the country, up and down that long lonely road of faith with Death Troopers and No Doors, No Windows, but this is the first time I've done one in my own backyard. Rob Thomas (not of Matchbox 20, but the trooper known as TK-1495) turned up along with the rest of the Garrison Carita of the 501st. The moment was extra-good because they managed to pull it all together almost literally at the eleventh hour, via a desperate email that I sent out on Friday afternoon. As always, the 501st were great with the crowd and had people freaking out, taking pictures and having fun. All the photos that I've posted here are courtesy of them, specifically Lisa -- what's your last name, Lisa?

On a friend/professional level, I got to hang out with the man behind the phenomena of Hint Fiction and his lovely wife (he also brought a publishing contract and a check, but that's another story).

My brother Dan and his wife Terri and their kids also turned up, and the 501st gave a chance to play Boondock Saints with their blasters.

Other celebrities in attendance included legendary singer/songwriter John Austin and his wife Erin Echo. Also putting in appearance were Chuck Saltern, former bassist for the punk-pop band Weston and his wife Becky and their beautiful little girl Georgia, and Lisa Zimmerman Vonhauser, one of the original architects of Round House -- arguably the scariest piece of architecture in New Hampshire.

Journalist and photographer Karen Reichley and her husband, Guitar Hero overlord Mark "Asplosions" Reichley came out to say hi and brought their son Nate -- in full Darth Vader gear.
As you can see, we were able to keep the 501st occupied for a while with copies of the book.
But eventually the unthinkable happened -- we actually sold out of Death Troopers! This was the first time on the tour that anything like that has ever happened. The store manager, Jim Munchel, and his loyal aide de camp Chris Carlin ran out to not one but two other nearby bookstores to buy up their inventory. But it was too late...the troopers got impatient and took me down.
Like I said, a lot of fun all the way around...but a bittersweet moment as well, since just last week it was announced that Jim's store is going to be closing after Christmas, along with about 200 other Borders Express and Waldenbooks stores. This store in particular has been very, very good to me over the past few years, and the fact that it's going away is a tough reminder of how tight things are, especially in publishing.

But -- the good new is that people like these guys keep turning out for events like they did yesterday. And that's not just a good thing...that's the best.

Thanks, guys.

Truly.

When Do I Need an Agent?

2009-11-05T22:15:00.001-08:00

Note: This is a re-posting of an entry from a couple years ago. People have asked me about this again, so I'm putting it here again.

Recently I got a question that I've heard before, which is, when is it time to find an agent?

There's plenty of information about this online already. There are whole blogs by agents where they answer exactly this kind of question. My reply, based solely on my experience and writers I've talked to, is that you need an agent when you start writing the type of thing that requires an agent to sell. That ought to be a no-brainer -- it's not. George V. Higgins once said that there is no substitute for knowing what you're doing. As usual, he's right.

If you're writing short stories or poetry and submitting them to magazines, you probably don't need an agent, certainly not to begin with and maybe not for a long time. I have an agent, and I still don't use her for magazine submissions. It's an unnecessary step, unless the periodical in question requires an agent as a go-between, and most of them (everything from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine to Prairie Schooner to The New Yorker) do not. There's a slush pile and a spot waiting for you there. Your job is to find your way to the top, and you're probably going to be doing that all on your own.

One of my favorite writers, the wonderful Tom Drury, told me that he sold several stories to The New Yorker and afterwards he had agents approaching him. Not coincidentally, this happened right around the time he needed an agent for his first book, The End of Vandalism. If you unfold this happy anecdote, it becomes an excellent illustration of how the process works, or ought to. First, Drury's top priority was obviously the quality of his writing -- he was repeatedly producing good stories. Second, he was selling them to The New Yorker, so he obviously knew his market. The last part of the puzzle, the agent, fell into place almost on its own. His toughest decision was which one he would choose.

If you're a writer than you need to concentrate first and foremost on your writing, a point emphasized by bestselling mystery writer Janet Evanovich in her peppy and readable How I Write. In other words make it as good as it can be. Make sure everything is spelled correctly (this may seem like a no-brainer -- it's not). Edit and polish, hone and hew, put it aside and look at it again in six weeks or six months with fresh eyes. Find a writers' group or a reader whose opinion you can trust. Take their criticism as objectively as possible. When you think you're ready...

Send it out? No. Find an agent? No.

Study your market. If you're going to submit a story to a magazine, read the magazine first (this may seem like a no-brainer-- it's not). Read several issues. Check out the Literary Marketplace. Go online to the magazine's website and read the writers' guidelines for submission.

Then, send it out. Get rejected. Try again. Get rejected. Try again. Get a personal note back from one of the readers. Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep revising. I once covered my entire dorm room door in college with rejection letters. Took me about a semester.

So, have we all got the drill? Write, get knocked on your butt, get back up again. And repeat.

I've heard more than one would-be writer express genuine concern that they might run afoul of some less-than-honest agent that might steal their work, their money or both. My response, and I don't mean to sound harsh, is: "What makes you so sure you've got something worth stealing?" When you're starting out, getting ripped off should not even be on your mind. First, be good enough to worry about getting ripped off.

Once you find your way onto that playing field, you still shouldn't lose much sleep over it. I'm not saying there aren't untrustworthy agents out there -- there's plenty of scam artists working every occupation on the planet -- but if you do your research online or in the LMP, you won't have to worry about it. Most agents work on commission. If you don't get paid, they don't get paid. Be wary of an agency or management service that asks for money upfront. Find out who their other clients are. Don't be afraid to ask questions about what your money is supposed to get you.

Choosing an agent is an important part of the process but it's equally important to know when you have to make that choice. We all have a finite amount of energy every day to accomplish what needs to be done. Don't waste time and energy worrying about an agent when you're in the part of your life and career where every ounce of attention must be paid to maximizing your potential.

You probably will need an agent if you're trying to get a book published. Most publishers won't read work that isn't submitted through an agenty. The LMP will steer you toward the agency that represents the type of work you're writing. Many of these agents will read a synopsis with sample pages and ask for more if they're interested. My personal experience is that the more of the finished product you have in hand while querying agents, the better off you are.

Take a page from Tom Drury's book. Be the best writer you can be. When it's finally time, you'll have your pick of agents.

Unshelved

2009-11-02T12:31:00.000-08:00

Heard of the online comic strip Unshelved? Librarian and all around awesome guy Gregory Fisher clued me in on it. (Click on the above image for a better view.)

Per Greg:

"It's all about the misadventures of the librarians at a small library in Mallsville. One feature they do every Sunday is the booktalk. Its a full color panel sometimes done by the Unshelved team and sometimes done by guest cartoonists. Last Sunday, the teen librarian (and Unshelved anti-hero) Dewey book talked Death Troopers to a pair of young adults."

Rock on! I freakin' love this. Thanks, Greg, bringing this to my attention!

Death Troopers on MTV!

2009-10-31T06:00:00.001-07:00

Well, sort of.

As a Halloween treat, MTV.com ran a free chapter of Death Troopers here. It's one of my favorites: "Lung Windows."

Headed to Michigan

2009-10-30T00:07:00.000-07:00

I'm working the midnight shift tonight and when I get home I'm climbing in the back of the big blue van and heading to Michigan for a couple of book signings over the long weekend. I'm particularly excited to get back there because my mom still lives there and I'll have a chance to say hi to some old friends. On Sunday I'm driving north to Petoskey to do an event at Horizon Books. Northern Michigan is particularly awesome this time of year. If you've never driven north in fall, all I can say is there's something instinctively gratifying about defying the natural, southern-fleeing order of things.

Also, I'm bringing my comic collection back to Pennsylvania -- two big oblong acid-free boxes of bagged comics that have lived at my mom's house for the past twenty-five years. Being forty years old and a homeowner, I've finally decided to move them out. Maybe I'll even complete my run of John Byrne X-Men by re-acquiring up issues 121-122.

I actually owned both of these once before (I even had Terry Austin autograph them for me at a Detroit convention) but sold them to buy Christmas presents back in 1986. Sigh.

Anyhow, on Monday, I'm doing an event at the Portage District Library, where, after my freshman year of college, I once pretended to shelve books while actually hiding the back and reading everything I could get my hands on. I had a big crush on another girl who worked there and spent the summer writing unfathomably wretched prose.

Has my writing gotten any better since then? Drop by one of these events and judge for yourself. I'll be the one staggering around in a cloud of delirious nostalgia.

Your Halloween Treat

2009-10-29T02:21:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already done so, you absolutely must read Norman Partridge's masterful Dark Harvest for Halloween. Don't think about it, don't wonder why, just click the dang link and hook yourself up with a copy. Trust me.

Why? Because it's what you want. People ask me how you write horror: this is the Strunk and White of how it's done -- fast, compulsive, scary and utterly brilliant storytelling, just in time for the season. Ostensibly the tale of a 1963 town whose young male citizens go gunning after a mythic figure called the October Boy -- aka Sawtooth Jack -- Dark Harvest is nothing less than a balls-out high-octane reinvention of the American horror novel on a candy-corn methamphetamine cocktail of pure narrative genius.

Call it Ray Bradbury on steroids, call it Big Daddy Roth-style hot rod Halloween horror...your tongue will go numb searching for comparisons, 'cuz, friends -- there ain't any for what Partridge does in this fast pumpkin-carving switchblade of a book. I gave my last copy away to a friend out in LA, and a week later, he was trying to explain how much he liked it. I just smiled, because I know how it is. You reach a point in life where you think you've seen it all, where that initial childlike top-of-the-rollercoaster feeling of awe and amazement doesn't work anymore. Except here it does. Because here, along with everything else, Partridge does the incredible, anticipating reader expectation and managing to beat you to the punch every step of the way.

As a writer, I wish I had just an ounce or two of whatever Norm was putting in his coffee when he wrote Dark Harvest. As a reader, I'm just damn glad he did.

Trooper Trailer Winner!

2009-10-27T06:47:00.000-07:00

I loved this contest.

When Erich at Del Rey first told me they were going to have a contest for people to create their own Death Trooper trailers, my initial fear was that nobody would do it.

I shouldn't have worried.

The results were all over the map. Some were scary. Some were funny. Some were flat-out amazing. The only thing they had in common was that they were all ridiculously entertaining. Throughout the book tour, people were always asking about the trailers and telling me how much they enjoyed them.

And now we have a winner.

Congratulations to all who entered -- I'd love to give all of you a full film crew and an unlimited budget to make all your Death Troopers into full fledged feature films.

And if you haven't checked out the trailers themselves, what are you waitin' for?

Pumpkin Troopers!

2009-10-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

October is my favorite month -- that's kind of a given, if you're a horror writer. But this October has been particularly fun. Exhibit A is this unspeakably awesome Death Trooper pumpkin here -- thanks to GameCouch!

Meanwhile Death Troopers got a nice shout-out in the LA Times over the weekend. You can check it out here!

On that same topic, if you or anybody you know is planning on dressing up as a Death Trooper this Halloween, send me pictures and I'll be sure and post them here. Heck, we might even have ourselves a little old unauthorized contest...

Unholy, huh?

2009-10-24T00:10:00.001-07:00

According to Amazon, my Supernatural novel, The Unholy Cause, is coming out in April. I had no idea. But, there you go...

Lucky 13

2009-10-23T22:52:00.000-07:00

I just found out that Death Troopers is #13 on the New York Times Bestseller List.

This makes me very happy.

Things to Do in Hershey When You're Home

2009-10-22T15:41:00.000-07:00

I got back home last night. The tour was amazing, but I'm glad to be back. Eleven days is a long time to be away from the family. So what do you do when you get back from a week and a half on the road?

Carve pumpkins with the kids. Do waterballoons. Wrestle. Go out for sushi and pizza. Hug a lot. Do a lot of laundry.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures I put up along the way. I did a lot of interviews, too, including this one in Chicago with Jimmy Mac and Jay Shepard at the Forcecast. Jimmy did a great job putting me at ease and asking questions, and I tried to answer them the best I could...although I think I sound a little frazzled.

There are a lot of others, and they were all great. I'm thankful for every opportunity I got to chat, and to every single person who drove out and bought the book, or came out to talk to me about Star Wars and writing..."thank you" doesn't quite cut it, but it will have to do.

Meanwhile, I hope you'll join me in Bryn Mawr, PA, on Saturday for the next signing. You'll find the details to the right.

Super Amazing Carmel, IN, B&N event

2009-10-20T22:27:00.000-07:00

And it was. No exaggeration, folks. I told you that you had to be there to check it out. These guys know how to throw a Star Wars party -- per the Bloodfin Garrison's "untouchable by death" Anthony Lillig, maestro of ceremonies, they seem to have invented the way it should be done. Witness, in no particular order, the following excellent photos, all snapped by Jay "WhoJedi" Newnum.

Tomorrow morning, I'm flying home. I couldn't ask for a better send-off event. Thank you, one and all.

Gunned Down at Powell's!

2009-10-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

The good folks over at the Cloud City Garrison of the 501st posted a truly amazing array of photos from Saturday's reading at the Powell's in Portland.

Oh yeah, I wasn't having any fun at all.

In Chicago, Bringing a Blaster to a Book Signing

2009-10-19T20:05:00.001-07:00

Tonight's book signing at Borders in Chicago/Oak Brook went great. I had podcast interviews before and after with Star Wars Action News and TheForce.net Forcecast. The 501st was there and had no compunction about loaning me a blaster. I got some of the best questions ever, both from the crowd and from my interviewers, Arnie Carvahlo and Jim McInerney respectively.

I'm supposed to fly out of Chicago tomorrow morning but now it looks like I'll be Mancow in the morning and might have to leave a bit later. I'll be sure to relate the entire experience here once it all goes down.

Folsom Prison Barge Blues

2009-10-16T17:06:00.001-07:00

Last night's Borders signing in Folsom was great. At first when I walked through the door I didn't see anyone at the table, and no stormtroopers, so I thought maybe the 501st couldn't make it. I found Marc, the community relations organizer, and told him that I was here for the signing. He said, "There's a lot of people here for the signing. Mr. Schreiber should be here anytime." I told him that I was Mr. Schreiber, and he whisked me back to the back room where Darth Vader was waiting along with half a dozen stormtroopers. When they escorted me back to the table, it was suddenly packed with people waiting to get books and posters signed.

Another great turnout; another great event. I'm currently ensconced in the high roller's suite of the Alexis Hotel in Seattle, getting ready to head out tonight's reading at University Books. If you're in the area, I hope to see you there!

Special thanks to Alex Telander, who took this picture. Thanks, Alex!

Huntington Beach zombies!

2009-10-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

Last night's signing at Huntington Beach, CA, went great. The 501st was there and things went spectacularly. At the beginning I was presented with a plaque making me an honorary member of the 501st.

Onward to Sacramento...

Troopers and Windows and Zombies, oh no...

2009-10-13T06:34:00.000-07:00

Today Death Troopers and No Doors, No Windows are available at bookstores and online. In honor of this, StarWars.com is having Zombie week -- and they're putting up some great new scary Star Wars art like the above piece by Katie Cook. Check it out, if you dare.

Of course for the full multi-sensory experience you should come visit me on tour these next couple weeks. Check out the schedule on the right and let me frighten you in person.

Gotta read Serena

2009-10-10T18:06:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine who reads a lot recommended Ron Rash's Serena. If the novel is one-tenth as good as its first paragraph, I'm sold.

When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father’s estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton’s child. She was accompanied by her father, who carried beneath his shabby frock a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so that it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton’s heart.

Edgar Allan Poe's Death Troopers

2009-10-09T00:33:00.000-07:00

It's a little known fact that Death Troopers is actually based on a classic poem by none other than Edgar Allan Poe.

Although most of the poem has been lost in the ravages of time, I was able to track down this small portion in an old issue of Weird Tales Magazine.

Death Troopers

by Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a Star Destroyer, while I trained to be a warrior
Over many a training drill of dark Imperial lore
While I nodded, nearly dreaming, suddenly there came a screaming,
as if something large careening, careening off my galley door.
“Tis some droid,” I muttered, “colliding with my galley door.”
Only this and nothing more.

Presently my heart beat faster and I powered up my blaster.
“Droid,” I called out, “I care not whether you are R2 or R5-D4.”
You certainly will not be missed, and you have angered Vader’s Fist
With your incessant pounding, pounding at my galley door.
Now you’ll taste my blaster,” and here I opened up the door.
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness hoary, like something out of Ralph McQuarrie
Wondering if indeed these were the droids that I was looking for,
Presently I heard a shrieking, like some hungry beast’s jaw creaking,
and a croaking gasp that uttered out-- “LV-574.”
This startled me, my ID number being LV-574.
Only this and nothing more.

Then I saw them in their masses, rising up like toxic gasses,
surging over me in their teeming lifeless hundreds through the door
Lunging, filling every corner, biting holes in my armor,
till I was chafing badly in places never chafed before
“Fiends!” I screamed, “shall I not survive to witness Episode IV?”
Quothe the zombies:
“Nevermore.”

My copy of the poem ends abruptly here, as if bitten off. Interestingly, that same issue contained a piece called "Memos from the Purge," by a young author named Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Anyone heard of this guy?

Notes from Forty - A Playlist

2009-09-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

I've been forty for about three hours now.

Just typing that last sentence me feel a little swirl of vertigo in my guts. So I've sought normalcy in the most instinctive way I know how. By constructing a playlist.

Here's a choice selection of old-guy rock from the playlist entitled "Forty":

I'm Afraid of Americans - David Bowie
I Was in the House When The House Burned Down - Warren Zevon
I'll Be You - Replacements
Revival - Soulsavers
No Expectations - The Rolling Stones
Devil's Haircut - Beck
Number with No Name - Ben Harper
Sara Smile - Hall and Oates
Cadillac Ranch - Bruce Springsteen
Your Little Hoodrat Friend - The Hold Steady
Hip Hop Thighs #17 - Ike Reilly
Out Here in the Middle - James McMurtry
What I Learned Out on the Road - Kid Rock
Corduroy - Pearl Jam
Synchronicity - Police
Magick - Ryan Adams
Limelight - Rush
Top of the World - Van Halen
World Spins Madly On - The Weepies
Waterslide - Bonedaddies
Keep Me in Your Heart - Warren Zevon

Is Writing Sexy?

2009-09-29T23:05:00.001-07:00

Not usually.

My wife and I just finished watching Season Two of Californication on DVD. And what I've noticed around my house is that whenever we watch Californication , my stock goes up a tick or two. Not much, and not for long, but when you're married it's like Amazon numbers...the slightest bump can make you feel, in the words of Charlie Runkle, like the king of fuck mountain.

Why? Because David Duchovny makes writing look sexy. Or not writing, more appropriately. He can hammer out a few words, type THE END, pour himself some Jamesons, light up a spliff and crank Warren Zevon, and make it look good. Californication is, of course, a very romantic show, as evidenced by the fact that its producers are able to take an innately unsexy act -- sitting in front of a word processor, staring at a screen, with occasional breaks to scratch one's ass -- and make it not only attractive but downright erotic.

Hollywood does a great job with this. Take, for example, God Hates Us All, the "legendary cult novel" that Duchovny's character, Hank Moody, ostensibly wrote on the show. It now exists, an actual full-length novel that you can buy on Amazon. Why? Because it was written by a sexy writer in between cigarettes and deep fits of self-loathing.

So here's my plan.

Before I start my next novel, I'm going to write a screenplay about myself writing it. This should be easy, because instead of an actual story with characters and sentences, all I'll need is a dummied-up book cover with a made up title, something catchy like The Wolves of Martha's Vineyard. I'll include a couple scenes of myself sitting at the laptop with an open bottle of Scotch, gazing into the distance (on Martha's Vineyard, natch) and typing a few words.

Then, once the movie (or TV show) gets produced, I'll actually write The Wolves of Martha's Vineyard and publish it. And no matter the book itself turns out to be about, America will devour it, having already been hopelessly seduced by the ultra arousing literary foreplay of watching me write it.

I can't believe it's taken me this long to figure this out.

I once dated a girl who told me she found me most attractive while I was writing. As flattered as I was by the comment, I couldn't help but think that meant she liked me best when my back was turned to her and I was silent and completely absorbed in something that had nothing to do with our relationship.

We broke up not longer afterward.

But if I ever do publish The Wolves of Martha's Vineyard, I think I'll dedicate it to her.

Death Troopers on eBay

2009-09-27T18:50:00.001-07:00

Here's an exciting opportunity to own a customized Death Trooper. Icky!

The Death Troopers Journals

2009-09-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

I just came across these last night in a notebook -- the original first pages of Death Troopers, back when it was still called Untitled Star Wars Horror Novel. (I think I prefer Death Troopers. It's catchier somehow.)

These chicken-scratches were made by the side of a pool in LA, in the summer of 2008, at a birthday party for a friend. I didn't have my laptop with me, so I wrote by hand. That splash on the first page is either pool water or tequila...I'm still waiting to hear back from the lab.

When I got back home, I switched over to the computer, but these first couple pages still look fairly close to the first chapter as it appears now. Those of you unable to read heiroglyphics will just have to take my word for it...

I Want a Drive-In

2009-09-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Last week over on Suvudu I wrote a post about how I'd like to start my own spookshow, possibly based on one of my books. Well, I'm over that now.

This week I want my own drive-in theater.

When I was a kid, growing up in Michigan, I had a speaker from a drive-in hanging in my room. I bought it when one of our local drive-in went out of business. I'd only been there a few times, and always to see kids' movies, naturally. But I remember distinctly going to visit relatives in Colorado, and going out to a multiple screen drive in. Again, a kids' movie...but the screen behind us was showing Psycho 2. It's no contender for horror movie of the year, but I'll never forget how awesome it was to turn around from Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (or whatever) and see a butcher knife plunge into some startlet's chest. Talk about your formative experiences.

I remember long car trips at night, looking out the window and occasionally catching sight of a glowing screen off in the distance. It was like finding a four-leaf clover out there somewhere in the dark. You had just a few seconds to try to figure out what was playing...the equivalent now, I guess, of trying to figure out what's being shown in the minivan passing you. Drive-ins are occasionally used to great effect in movies themselves...consider one of my favorite scenes from Jan de Bont's Twister, when the tornado hits a drive-in showing The Shining. It takes balls to extensively reference a film as good as Kubrick's in a flick as flimsy as de Bont's, but it's an excellent bit of showmanship just the same.

Now most of the drive-ins are gone. There's still one near where I live, and we still load up the Playmate cooler with beer and try to head out there at least once in the summer. But what I really want is just to own my own. I'm sure there's plenty of old equipment out there, and all you need is land and a big screen. I'd do kids movies on Friday night, and a Saturday night horror show...maybe even a triple-feature. Popcorn, Coke, beer and enough room for the kids to play Frisbee till it got dark. A big marquee out front.

You'd love it.

Paging Senor Spielbergo!

2009-09-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the last day to enter the Death Troopers book trailer contest and win a bunch of cool Star Wars swag, including a copy of Death Troopers autographed by some crazy horror writer.

I've seen some of the trailers that people are making, and they're just amazing. It speaks to the ten-year-old in me who got out his parents' Super 8 camera and shot three-minute movies on the roof of his house. (I'm dating myself badly here...even M. Night had a video camera back then).

In any case, if you've been working on one of these puppies, call in sick at work and finish it up. I'm psyched to see your work!

Plus! You can now read Chapter One of the book itself here!

If I ran the zoo...

2009-09-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

If I could build the perfect spook show, what would I do? Find out at my latest post over on Suvudu...